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exaggerated. For in order that such inductions should be valid, they should be taken from a very wide area, and many disturbing causes should be accounted for or eliminated. The effects of unfavourable seasons and interrupted importations - it is only twenty years since the country accepted the principles of free trade, several years less than twenty since it has experienced the advantage of that policy-should be recognised in interpreting the money value of the first necessaries of life; while the effects of speculative purchases and forced sales are equally dominant in the price current of its conveniences. To interpret a rise and fall in the value of money (the efflux and influx of which, as a merchantable commodity, is inevitably more free than that of any other article of value) by the money measure of that which is open to a vast variety of influences, must be an operation in which infinite caution is necessary, in order to prevent the inference from becoming wholly untrustworthy or delusive.

On such occasions as those in which the British Association has met in considerable manufacturing towns, the Section over which I have the honour to preside, has generally had the benefit of local trade reports. In so considerable a town as Nottingham, one too which for a long time has been distinguished as the centre of important and special manufactures, the Section may hope to have the advantage of hearing these reports, and obtaining information as to local expenditure and improvement. To such reports it is our practice to give priority in so far as may be consistent with the general convenience of the business before the Section. For the rest, the committee will endeavour to group the papers which are to be read so as to make the discussions of each day as congruous as possible.

NOTE.—The author has been informed of two errors in the foregoing address. The agricultural statistics were collected by the Board of Trade, and not by that of the Poor Law; and it appears that the number of pigs returned does not include those kept by others than farmers, or persons holding and cultivating a minimum amount (under five acres) of land. But even if these had been added, it is certain that the inference would be very little weakened. -J. E. T. R.

On the ECONOMIC CONDITION of the HIGHLANDS of SCOTLAND,

By His GRACE the DUKE of ARGYLL, K.T.

[Read before the Statistical Society, June, 1866.]

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Ar the courteous invitation of the Council, I was present here last year when a Paper was read by Professor L. Levi, "On the Economic “ Condition of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.”

I was enabled, on that occasion, by the kindness of the President, to express to the Society my dissent from the professor's views, and I have now the honour of fulfilling an engagement into which I then entered, to record that dissent in a more definite and formal shape.

It is not my intention, however, to fatigue the Society by any minute criticism on the mere details of Professor Levi's paper. Whether those details are so put together as to give a true picture on the whole, is a question which will best be dealt with by presenting another picture of my own.

There are of course a great many facts referred to in the paper which are not open to dispute. That the climate of the Highland counties is a wet one; that the country is a rugged one as regards a large portion of its area; that the proportion of population to the square mile is greatly less dense than in counties where the proportion of mountain is also less; that on Highland mountains the proportion of land under tillage to land under pasture is comparatively small; that on these same mountains, if we wander over them, our chances of meeting a sheep are at all times seven times greater than our chances of meeting a man; all these are statements which are true enough, although I do not see their relevancy to the general argument of the paper. Even as regards the various statistical tables and calculations of the paper, it is not my intention to examine their accuracy, because for the most part they seem to me to be wholly beside the real question at issue. I may mention, however, in passing, that as regards one or two of these tables, it is evident, at a glance, that Professor Levi has been led into some extraordinary mistakes. For example, at p. 379 I find a table which compares the four Highland counties with each other as regards the number of proprietors and the average size of properties in each. It was with infinite surprise I learned for the first time from this table, that there are fewer proprietors in Argyllshire than in the county of Sutherland—272 being assigned to Sutherland, and only 180 to Argyllshire. I thought it had been sufficiently notorious that Sutherland is in the hands of a very small number of proprietors, and very little inquiry would have informed Professor Levi that, as compared with this condition of things, property in Argyllshire is in a multitude of hands. As a matter of fact, the number of Commissioners of Supply for the county of Sutherland, are six in number, the same body in Argyllshire amounts to ninety-eight.

I mention this case, however, chiefly for the purpose of saying that as it forms the subject of an important paragraph in the paper, and is made to bear upon the laws of primogeniture and entail, so extravagant an error has cast complete doubt in my mind over the accuracy of all the statistics of the paper-statistics, however, which I do not doubt were drawn up in entire good faith, and from sources which Professor Levi considered to be trustworthy; but in respect to which he has been unable to correct the most obvious blunders by any personal knowledge of the subject or of the country.

Having said so much, I pass at once from anything approaching to mere criticisms of detail, to state the main question in dispute as clearly and as broadly as I can. I do not wish to bind the professor to particular expressions, but to take the main conclusions of his paper, and to show that they are fundamentally unsound. Even where his facts are correct, they are stated in a false connection. To use a familiar expression, he has "got hold of the stick by the

wrong end,” and his general view of the existing condition of the Highlands is extravagantly erroneous.

First, then, Professor Levi represents the Highland counties to be, as compared with the rest of the country, in a stagnant or declining state ; “subject to paralysing and deteriorating

influences;" with a soil neglected," resources unknown and “ unavailable,” and “capital quite beyond the reach of their forlorn “ inbabitants."

Secondly, he connects their condition next after the permanent effects of climate, mainly with the wilful discouragement of tillage, with clearances, and generally with those changes of management which have accompanied the development of sheep farming in the Highlands.

On both these points my view is precisely the converse. As regards the first, I hold as a matter of fact that no portion of the United Kingdom has made more rapid growth in agricultural improvement during the last one hundred years than the Highland counties. Secondly, I hold that this improvement, and the growing prosperity of the country, is due mainly to those very changes which Professor Levi says are the cause of a supposed decline. Thirdly, I think it can be shown conclusively that the only districts in the Highlands which are still in an unsatisfactory condition are

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precisely those in which the older system has been clung to and maintained.

No two positions could be more sharply contrasted; the difference is fundamental—so fundamental, that it would almost seem as if there were left no common ground for argument.

I begin, therefore, with an endeavour to ascertain whether any such common ground exists, and if it does not exist in the form in which the argument has hitherto been stated, whether any common ground can be cleared by a better understanding on some first principles which are involved in the discussion.

Now at the very root of all Professor Levi's arguments, and colouring all his views of fact, lies the assumption that the one sufficient test of comparative prosperity or decline in any given country, is to be found in the increase, stationary character, or decrease in the number of its population. I must, on the contrary, lay down the principle, as lying at the very root of my argument, that the mere amount of population, apart from the social and economical condition of that population, is no test of prosperity whatever. The decrease of a population which lived in hovels and fed upon potatoes, and were incapable of producing any surplus from their labour, may be the very first condition of agricultural mprovement.

Again, there can be no judgment formed of the decline or advancement of any country without an inquiry into its past condition. There is no such inquiry in Professor Levi's paper. Thus the very first elements of a question, which is essentially a question of comparison, are wanting in that paper. He pronounces our condition to be stagnant or declining; he does so by presenting a partial and exaggerated view of the evils which still remain, and by avoiding altogether any attempt to appreciate the evils which once existed.

Again, it is tacitly assumed throughout Professor Levi's paper, that value as measured by rent is quite a subordinate element in measuring the prosperity of an agricultural country. In fact it is not only treated as subordinate, but it is excluded altogether. From beginning to end of Professor Levi's paper, there is no attempt to estimate the increase of value. But this is not all. In a speech to the Highland Agricultural Society, at Inverness, I observed upon this omission, and that speech was replied to by Professor Levi in a letter addressed to the “ Morning Post.” In that letter Professor Levi refers to increased rentals, as measuring only the prosperity of

a few owners of land.” I am almost ashamed to be called upon before a scientific society, to point out that this is not language worthy of a scientific question : that increased rent means increased produce and larger exports; that increased produce must be the

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fruit of better agriculture, of larger capital, of natural aptitudes of soil put to more skilful use; and lastly, that a great increase in rent means a great increase in that surplus produce of labour upon which the increase of the general wealth of the community depends. I do not affirm that upon these grounds an increased rental proves the existence of all the elements we should desire in complete prosperity, but I do affirm that when we can say of an agricultural community that it yields for the consumption of other populations a large and increasing surplus of agricultural produce, and when there is no attempt even to prove a decline in social condition, the presumption is that such a community is itself advancing, as well as becoming more valuable to the communities around it; and the onus probandi is thrown entirely upon those who affirm of it that it is in a stagnant or declining state.

What I propose to do in this paper is, first, to say a few words on the condition of the Highlands up to the close of the civil wars; secondly, to notice the period of transition after the close of those wars, the causes and the effects connected with the introduction of sheep farming; thirdly, to give a more accurate picture of the present condition of the country than Professor Levi has supplied.

The genius of Sir Walter Scott has bathed in the light of imperishable romance the doings and the feelings of the old Highland clans. They had the virtues of all rude and warlike races. They were brave and hospitable, and faithful according to their own rough codes of honour. But the condition of the people was what it could not fail to be from the nature of the life they led, and from the nature of the country they inhabited. The land was a land capable of yielding adequate means of support only as a return to industry and skill. The life was a life in which industry was impossible, and in which agricultural skill was unattainable and unknown. The whole condition of society was founded on war as an habitual pursuit ; a chief was powerful according to the number of his followers. The land was held and subdivided with a view to their increase up to, and beyond the bare limits of subsistence. There is abundant evidence that they lived in constant scarcity and exposed to frequently recurring seasons of famine. Mr. Cosmo Innes, than whom no man is more competent to speak with authority on the matter, has said of the old inhabitants of the Highlands that “they

were always on the verge of famine, and every few years suffering “ the horrors of actual starvation." *

In corroboration of this remark, Mr. Innes has communicated to me a fact which throws a eurious light on the condition in which the Highlands must have been when the condition even of some of the

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* "Sketches of Early Scottish History," p. 434.

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