of the expected prosperity of those placed in the new villages. But no hint is given of this important truth, that the same high prices would have equally affected the small occupiers as the great stock graziers, and that the high prices are the causes of the increased value of land, and not the coldhearted merciless system pursued, and the change of inhabitants. Wherever there is a space and soil covered with a well-disposed population, experience, example, and encouragement, will teach them to better their situation.

I shall only notice one other argument adduced in support of depopulating the Highlands; and that is, that sheep are the stock best calculated for the mountains. On this subject there can be but one opinion; but why not allow the small farmer to possess sheep as well as the great stock grazier? But it is said that it is only in extensive establishments that stock-farming can be profitable to the landlord. This hypothesis has not yet been proved by sufficient experience, or proper comparison. But allowing that it were, and allowing a landlord the full gratification of seeing every tenant possessing a large capital, with all comforts corresponding to the opinion of a great proprietor, who wishes to have no tenant but who can afford a bottle of wine at dinner, there is another important consideration, not to be over

• In the same manner, reports are published of the unprecedented increase of the fisheries on the coast of the Highlands, proceeding, as it is said, from the late improvements; whereas, it is well known, that the increase is almost entirely occasioned by the resort of fishers from the South. To form an idea of the estimation in which Highland fishermen are held, and the little share they have in those improvements of the fisheries noticed in the newspapers, we may turn to an advertisement in the Inverness newspapers, describing sixty lots of land to be let in that country for fishing stations. To this notice is added a declaration, that a “decided preference will be given to strangers." Thus, while, on the one hand, the unfortunate natives are driven from their farms in the interior, a decided preference is given to strangers to settle on the coast, and little hope left for them save that those invited from a distance will not accept the offer. When they see themselves thus rejected, both as cultivators and fishermen, what can be expected but despondency, indolence, and a total neglect of all improvement or exertion?

looked in introducing this system into the Highlands-that, in allotting a large portion of land to one individual, perhaps two or three hundred persons will be deprived of their usual means of subsistence, compelled to remove from their native land, and to yield up their ancient possessions to the man of capital", to enable him to drink wine, to drive to church in a gig, to teach his daughters music and quadrille dancing, and to mount his sons upon hunters, while the ancient tenants are forced to become bondsmen or day-labourers, with the recollection of their former honourable independence still warm; yet this is a system strongly recommended and practised with great inconsistency by men who have the words liberty and independence in their mouths, and are loud in their complaints of the slavish oppressed state of the people.

It is impossible to contemplate, without anxiety and pain, the probable effects of these operations in producing that demoralization, pauperism, and frequency of crime, which endanger the public tranquillity, and threaten to impose no small burden on landlords, in contributing to the maintenance of those who cannot or will not maintain themselves. Will the Highlanders, as cottagers, without employment, refrain from immorality and crime? Can we expect from such men the same regularity of conduct as when they were independent, both in mind and in circumstances †? When collected together in towns and villa

• We have lately seen 31 families, containing 115 persons, dispossessed of their lands, which were given to a neighbouring stock-grazier, to whom these people's possessions lay contiguous. Thus, as a matter of convenience, to a man who had already a farm of nine miles in length, 115 persons, who had never been a farthing in arrear of rent, were deprived of house and shelter, and sent pennyless on the world. The number of similar instances of a disregard of the happiness or misery of human beings in an age which boasts of enlightened humanity, patriotism, and friendship for the people, are almost incredible, and do unspeakable injury to their best principles, by generating a spirit of revenge, envy, and malice.

When the engrossing system commenced in the North, and the people were removed from their farms, a spirit of revenge was strongly evinced

ges, will they be able to maintain the same character that was their pride on their paternal farms? Losing respect for the opinion of the world*, will they not also lose that respect for themselves, which, in its influence, is much more powerful than laws on morality and public manners, and attempt to procure a livelihood by discreditable expedients, by petty depredations, or by parish aid? We have the example of Ireland, where the people are poor and discontented. In the tumults and outrages of that country, we see how fertile poverty and misery are in crimes. The Irish and Highlanders were originally one people, the same in lineage, language, and character, till the oppression of a foreign government, and the system of middlemen, as they are called, with other irritating causes, have reduced the lower orders in the former country to a state of poverty which, while it has debased their principles, has generated hatred and envy against their superiors. This has been the principal cause of those outrages which throw such a shade over the character of a brave and generous people; who, if they had been cherished and treated as the clansmen of the Highlands once were, would, no doubt, have been equally faithful to their superiors in turbulent times, and equally moral and industrious in their general conduct +. But,

among those who were permitted to remain in the country. They saw. themselves reduced to poverty, and, believing that those who got possession of their lands were the advisers of their landlords, hatred and revenge, heightened by poverty, led to the commission of those thefts from the pastures noticed in the criminal convictions in the Appendix. As cattlestealing disappeared when the people were convinced of the immorality of the practice, and as the crime now noticed commenced only when they were reduced to poverty, and instigated by vindictive feelings for the loss of their ancient habitations, may it not be believed that, if these irritating causes had not occurred, neither would the crimes which seem to have resulted from them? And if circumstances confirm the justness of this supposition, may we not ask what degree of responsibility attaches to those whose plans led on to these crimes?

• See Appendix EE.

The misery of the lower orders in Ireland is frequently produced as an instance of the misery resulting from the continuance of small tenants in the Highlands. This, however, must originate in a want of knowledge

instead of exhibiting such a character as we have depicted, we have the following view from an intelligent author on the "Education of the Peasantry in Ireland." In allusion to the absence of proprietors, their ignorance of the cha racter, dispositions, and capability of the native population, and their harsh measures towards them, he says, "The gentry, for the most part, seldom find time for such inquiries; the peasantry who live around them are sometimes the objects of fear, but more usually of contempt; they may be enemies to guard against, creatures to be despised, but never subjects of research or examination. The peasantry saw that the real hardships of their condition were never inquired into. Their complaints were met by an appeal to force: the impatience of severe oppression was extinguished in blood. This served to harden their hearts; it alienated them from the established order of things; it threw them back on their own devices, and made them place their confidence in their wild schemes of future retaliation.

"The gentry, of a lofty and disdainful spirit, intrepid and tyrannical, divided from the people by old animosities, by religion, by party, and by blood; divided, also, frequently by the necessities of an improvident expenditure, which made them greedy for high rents, easily to be obtained in the competition of an overcrowded population, but not paid without grudging and bitterness of heart; the extravagance of the landlord had but one resource

of the relative state of the two countries, which will not bear a comparison. The small tenants in the Highlands generally possessed from two to ten or twenty milch cows, with the usual proportion of young cattle, from two to five horses, and from twenty to one or two hundred sheep: the quantity of arable land being sufficient to produce winter provender for the stock, and to supply every necessary for the family. To each of these farms a cottager was usually attached, who also had his share of land; so that every family consumed their own produce, and, except in bad seasons, were independent of all foreign supplies. This was, and still is, in many cases, the small farming system in the Highlands, to which the system prevalent in Ireland bears so little resemblance, that it is impossible to reason analogically from the one to the other.

high rents; the peasant had but one means of livingthe land: he must give what is demanded, or starve; and, at best, he did no more than barely escape starving. His life is a struggle against high rents, by secret combination and open violence: that of the landlord, a struggle to be paid, and to preserve a right of changing his tenantry when and as often as he pleased. In this conflict, the landlord was not always wrong, nor the peasantry always right. The indulgent landlord was sometimes not better treated than the harsh one, nor low rents better paid than high. The habits of the people were depraved, and the gentry without attending to this, and, surprised that no indulgence on their part produced an immediately corresponding return of gratitude and punctuality, impatiently gave up the matter as beyond their comprehension, and the people as incapable of improvement.”

This being given as the state of the Irish, we have the following view of the English peasantry from an able author, who, as I have already stated, in p. 153, describes the degradation consequent on the expulsion of the agricultural population from their lands. "Millions of independent peasantry were thus at once degraded into beggars. Stripped of all their proud feelings, which hitherto had characterized Englishmen, they were too ignorant, too dispersed, too domestic, and possessed too much reverence for their superiors, to combine as mechanics or manufacturers in towns. Parish relief was, therefore, established as a matter of necessity." Endeavouring to show the impossibility of preserving independence and morality in the precarious state of existence to which many are subject in England, he proceeds: "In England, the poor quarrel about, and call for, charity as a right, without being either grateful or satisfied. The question of property should be but of secondary consideration on this subject with the State. Whether the rents of the parish go to one great lord, or to one hundred great paupers, is a point of less importance than moral