with its original operation, but not with the the manners, to the advantages and the wat is primitive stability. Since the islanders, no longer of the people, whose life they would model, and content to live, have learned the desire of grow-whose evils they would remedy.

ing rich, an ancient dependent is in danger of giving way to a higher bidder, at the expense of domestic dignity and hereditary power. The stranger, whose money buys him preference, considers himself as paying for all that he has, and is indifferent about the laird's honour or safety. The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will, by the love of money, be tempted to forego.

I have found in the hither parts of Scotland, men, not defective in judgment or general experience, who consider the tacksman as a useless burden of the ground, as a drone who lives upon the product of an estate, without the right of property, or the merit of labour, and who impoverishes at once the landlord and the tenant. The land, say they, is let to the tacksman at sixpence an acre, and by him to the tenant at tenpence. Let the owner be the immediate landlord to all the tenants; if he sets the ground at eightpence, he will increase his revenue by a fourth part, and the tenant's burden will be diminished by a fifth.

A

Nothing is less difficult than to procure one convenience by the forfeiture of another. soldier may expedite his march by throwing away his arms. To banish the tacksman is easy, to make a country plentiful by diminishing the people, is an expeditious mode of husbandry; but that abundance, which there is nobody to enjoy, contributes little to human happiness."

As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labour. If the tacksman be taken away, the Hebrides must in their present state be given up to grossness and ignorance; the tenant, for want of instruction, will be unskilful, and for want of admonition, will be negligent. The laird, in these wide estates, which often consist of islands remote from one another, cannot extend his personal influence to all his tenants; and the steward having no dignity annexed to his character, can have little authority, among men taught to pay reverence only to birth, and who regard the tacksman as their hereditary superior; nor can the steward have equal zeal for the prosperity of an estate profitable only to the laird, with the tacksman, who has the laird's income involved in his own.

Those who pursue this train of reasoning, seem not sufficiently to inquire whither it will The only gentlemen in the islands are the lead them, nor to know that it will equally show lairds, the tacksmen, and the ministers, who frethe propriety of suppressing all wholesale trade, quently improve their livings by becoming farmof shutting up the shops of every man who sells ers. If the tacksmen be banished, who will be what he does not make, and of extruding all left to impart knowledge, or impress civility? whose agency and profit intervene between the The laird must always be at a distance from the manufacturer and the consumer. They may, greater part of his lands; and if he resides at all by stretching their understandings a little wider, upon them, must drag his days in solitude, hav comprehend, that all those who, by undertaking ing no longer either a friend or a companion; he large quantities of manufacture, and affording will therefore depart to some more comfortable employment to many labourers, make them-residence, and leave the tenants to the wisdom selves considered as benefactors to the public, and mercy of a factor.

rent. These, I believe, employ in the care of their cattle, and the labour of ullage, a kind of tenants yet lower; who having a hut, with grass for a certain number of cows and sheep, pay their rent by a stipulated quantity of labour.

have only been robbing their workmen with one Of tenants there are different orders, as they hand, and their customers with the other. If have greater or less stock. Land is sometimes Crowley had sold only what he could make, and leased to a small fellowship, who live in a cluster if his smiths had wrought their own iron with of huts, called a Tenant's Town, and are bound their own hammers, he would have lived on less, jointly and separately for the payment of their and they would have sold their work for more. The salaries of superintendents and clerks would have been partly saved, and partly shared, and nails been sometimes cheaper by a farthing in a hundred. But then if the smith could not have found an immediate purchaser, he must have deserted his anvil; if there had by accident at any time been more sellers than buyers, the workmen must have reduced their profit to nothing, by underselling one another; and as no great stock could have been in any hand, no sudden demand of large quantities could have been answered, and the builder must have stood still till the nailer could supply him.

According to these scheines, universal plenty is to begin and end in universal misery. Hope and emulation will be utterly extinguished; and as all must obey the call of immediate necessity, nothing that requires extensive views, or provides for distant consequences, will ever be per

formed.

To the southern inhabitants of Scotland, the state of the mountains and the islands is equally unknown with that of Borneo or Sumatra; of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest. They are strangers to the lunghage and

The condition of domestic servants or the price of occasional labour, I do not know with certainty. I was told that the maids have sheep, and are allowed to spin for their own clothing; perhaps they have no pecuniary wages, or none but in very wealthy families. The state of life which has hitherto been purely pastoral, begins now to be a little variegated with comme.cc; but novelties enter by degrees, and till one mode has fully prevailed over the other, no settled to tion can be formed.

Such is the system of insular subordination, which having little variety, cannot afford much delight in the view, nor long detain the mind in contemplation. The inhabitants were for a long time perhaps not unhappy; but their content was a inuddy mixture of pride and ignorance, an indifference for pleasures which they did not know, a blind veneration for their chiefs, and a strong conviction of their own importance.

Their pride has been crushed by the heavy

WESTERN ISLANDS, &c.

It was observed by one of the chiefs hand of a vindictive conqueror, whose severities of the islands, and riot without control in cruelty have been followed by laws, which, though they and waste. cannot be cailed cruel, have produced much dis- of Sky, that fifty armed men might, without recontent, because they operate upon the surface sistance, ravage the country. Laws that place of life, and make every eye bear witness to sub-the subjects in such a state, contravene the first jection. To be compelled to a new dress, has principles of the compact of authority; they exact obedience, and yield no protection. always been found painful.

It affords a generous and manly pleasure to Their chiefs being now deprived of their jurisdiction, have already lost much of their influence; conceive a little nation gathering its fruits and and as they gradually degenerate from patriar-tending its herds with fearless confidence, though chal rulers to rapacious landlords, they will divest themselves of the little that remains.

That dignity which they derived from an opinion of their military importance, the law, which disarmed them, has abated. An old gentleman, delighting himself with the recollection of better days, related, that forty years ago, a chieftain walked out attended by ten or twelve followers with their arms rattling. That animating rabble has now ceased. The chief has lost his formidable retinue; and the Highlander walks his heath unarmed and defenceless, with the peaceful submission of a French peasant, or English cottager.

Their ignorance grows every day less, but their knowledge is yet of little other use than to show them their wants. They are now in the period of education, and feel the uneasiness of discipline, without yet perceiving the benefit of

instruction.

it lies open on every side to invasion, where, in
contempt of walls and trenches, every man sleeps
securely with his sword beside him: where all
on the first approach of hostility, came together
at the call to battle, as at a summons to a festal
show; and committing their cattle to the care of
those whom age or nature has disabled, engaged
the enemy with that competition for hazard and
for glory, which operate in men that fight under
the eye of those whose dislike or kindness they
have always considered as the greatest evil or
the greatest good.

This was, in the beginning of the present
century, the state of the Highlands. Every man
was a soldier, who partook of national confidence,
and interested himself in national honour. To
lose this spirit, is to lose what no small advan-
tage will compensate.

It may likewise deserve to be inquired, whether a great nation ought to be totally commercial? The last law, by which the Highlanders are whether amidst the uncertainty of human affairs, deprived of their arms, has operated with efficacy too much attention to one mode of happiness beyond expectation. Of former statutes made may not endanger others? whether the pride of with the same design, the execution had been riches must not sometimes have recourse to the feeble, and the effect inconsiderable. Conceal-protection of courage? and whether, if it be nement was undoubtedly practised, and perhaps There was tenderness often with connivance. or partiality on one side, and obstinacy on the other. But the law, which followed the victory of Culloden, found the whole nation dejected and intimidated; informations were given without danger and without fear, and the arms were collected with such rigour, that every house was despoiled of its defence.

To disarm part of the Highlands, could give no reasonable occasion of complaint. Every government must be allowed the power of taking away the weapon that is lifted against it. But the loyal clans murinured with some appearance of justice, that, after having defended the king, they were forbidden for the future to defend themselves; and that the sword should be forfeited, which had been legally employed. Their case is undoubtedly hard, but in political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

Whether by disarming a people thus broken into several tribes, and thus remote from the seat of power, more good than evil has been produced, ay deserve inquiry. The supreme power in every community has the right of debarring every Individual, and every subordinate society, from self-defence, only because the supreme power is able to defend them; and therefore where the governor cannot act, he must trust the subject to act for himself. These islands might be wasted with fire and sword before their sovereign would know their distress. A gang of robbers, such as has been Itely found confederating themselves in the Highlands, might lay a wide region under contribution. The crew of a petty privateer might land on the largest and most wealthy

cessary to preserve in some part of the empire the military spirit, it can subsist more commodiously in any place than in remote and unprofitable provinces, where it can commonly do little harm, and whence it may be called forth at any sudden exigence?

It must however be confessed, that a man who places honour only in successful violence, is a very troublesome and pernicious animal in time of peace; and that the martial character cannot prevail in a whole people, but by the diminution of all other virtues. He that is accustomed to resolve all right into conquest, will have very little tenderness or equity. All the friendship in such a life can be only a confederacy of invasion, or alliance of defence. The strong must flourish Till the Highlanders lost their ferocity with by force, and the weak subsist by stratagem. their arms, they suffered from each other all could act. Every provocation was revenged that malignity could dictate, or precipitance with blood, and no man that ventured into a numerous company, by whatever occasion brought together, was sure of returning without a wound. If they are now exposed to foreign hostilities, they may talk of the danger, but can seldom feel it. If they are no longer martial, they are no longer quarrelsome. Misery is caused, for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but do mestic animosities allow no cessation.

The abolition of the local jurisdictions, which had for so many ages been exercised by the chiefs, has likewise its evils and its good. feudal constitution naturally diffused itself into

The

long ramifications of subordinate authority.- to obtain the consent of others to our gratifica To this general temper of the government was added the peculiar form of the country, broken by mountains into many subdivisions scarcely accessible but to the natives, and guarded by passes, or perplexed with intricacies, through which national justice could not find its way.

tion. Power, simply considered, whatever it confers on one, must take from another. Wealth enables its owner to give to others, by taking only from himself. Power pleases the violent and proud: wealth delights the placid and the timorous. Youth therefore flies at power, and age grovels after riches.

The power of deciding controversies, and of punishing offences, as some such power there The chiefs, divested of their prerogatives, nemust always be, was intrusted to the lairds of cessarily turn their thoughts to the improve. the country, to those whom the people consi- ment of their revenues, and expect more rent, dered as their natural judges. It cannot be as they have less homage. The tenant, who is supposed that a rugged proprietor of the rocks, far from perceiving that his condition is made unprincipled and unenlightened, was a nice re- better in the same proportion as that of his landsolver of entangled claims, or very exact in pro-lord is made worse, does not immediately see portioning punishment to offences. But the more he indulged his own will, the more he held his vassals in dependence. Prudence and innocence, without the favour of the chief, conferred no security; and crimes involved no danger, when the judge was resolute to acquit.

When the chiefs were men of knowledge and virtue, the convenience of a domestic judicature was great. No long journeys were necessary, nor artificial delays could be practised; the character, the alliances, and interests of the litigants were known to the court, and all false pretences were easily detected. The sentence, when it was past, could not be evaded; the power of the laird superseded formalities, and justice could not be defeated by interest or stra

tagem.

I doubt not but that since the regular judges have made their circuits through the whole country, right has been every where more wisely and more equally distributed; the complaint is, that litigation is grown troublesome, and that the magistrates are too few, and therefore often too remote for general convenience.

Many of the smaller islands have no legal officer within them. I once asked, if a crime should be committed, by what authority the offender could be seized? and was told, that the laird would exert his right; a right which he must now usurp, but which surely necessity must vindicate, and which is therefore yet exercised in lower degrees, by some of the proprietors, when legal processes cannot be obtained.

In all greater questions, however, there is now happily an end to all fear or hope from malice or from favour. The roads are secure in those places, through which, forty years ago, no traveller could pass without a convoy. All trials of right by the sword are forgotten, and the mean are in as little danger from the powerful as in other places. No scheme of policy has, in any country, yet brought the rich and poor on equal terms into courts of judicature. Perhaps experience, improving on experience, may in time effect it.

why his industry is to be taxed more heavily than before. He refuses to pay the demand, and is ejected; the ground is then let to a stran ger, who perhaps brings a larger stock, but who taking the land at its full price, treats with the laird upon equal terms, and considers him not as a chief, but as a trafficker in land. Thus the estate perhaps is improved, but the clan is broken.

It seems to be the general opinion, that the rents have been raised with too much eagerness. Some regard must be paid to prejudice. Those who have hitherto paid but little, will not suddenly be persuaded to pay much, though they can afford it. As ground is gradually improved, and the value of money decreases, the rent may be raised without any diminution of the farmer's profits; yet it is necessary in these countries, where the ejection of a tenant is a greater evil than in more populous places, to consider not merely what the land will produce, but with what ability the inhabitant can cultivate it. A certain stock can allow but a certain payment; for if the land be doubled, and the stock remains the same, the tenant becomes no richer. Th proprietors of the Highlands might perhaps often increase their income, by subdividing the farms, and allotting to every occupier only so many acres as he can profitably employ, but that they want people.

There seems now, whatever be the cause, to be through a great part of the Highlands a gene ral discontent. That adherence which was lately professed by every man to the chief of his name, has now little prevalence; and he that cannot live as he desires at home, listens to the tale of fortunate islands, and happy regions, where every man may have land of his own, and cat the product of his labour without a superior.

Those who have obtained grants of American lands, have, as is well known, invited settle s from all quarters of the globe; and among other places, where oppression might produce a wish for new habitations, their emissaries would not fail to try their persuasions in the isles of ScotThose who have long enjoyed dignity and land, where at the time when the clans were power, ought not to lose it without some equiva-newly disunited from their chiefs, and exaslent. There was paid to the chiefs by the pub-perated by unprecedented exactions, it is no lic, in exchange for their privileges, perhaps wonder that they prevailed.

a sum greater than most of them had ever pos- Whether the mischiefs of emigration were imsessed, which excited a thirst for riches, of which it showed them the use. When the power of birth and station ceases, no hope remains but from the prevalence of money. Power and wealth supply the place of each other. Power confers the ability of gratifying our desire without the consent of others. Wealth enables us

mediately perceived, may be justly questioned. They who went first, were probably such as could best be spared; but the accounts sent by the earliest adventurers, whether true or false, inclined many to follow them; and whole neigh bourhoods formed parties for removal; so that departure from their native country is no longer

This is the real effect of emigration, if those that go away together settle on the same spot, To hinder insurrection by driving away the and preserve their ancient union. Put some re- people, and to govern peaceably by having no late that these adventurous visitants of unknown subjects, is an expedient that argues no great regions, after a voyage passed in dreams of plenty profundity of politics. To soften the obdurate, and felicity, are dispersed at last upon a sylvan to convince the mistaken, to mollify the resentwilderness, where their first years must be spent in toil to clear the ground which is afterwards to be tilled, and that the whole effect of their undertaking is only more fatigue and equal scarcity.

Thus England has for several years been filled with the achievements of seventy thou sand Highlanders employed in America. 1 have heard from an English officer, not much inclined to favour them, that their behaviour deserved a very high degree of military praise; but their number has been much exaggerated. To allure them into the army, it was thought One of the ministers told me, that seventy thouproper to indulge them in the continuance of sand men could not have been found in all the their national dress. If this concession could Highlands, and that more than twelve thousand have any effect, it might easily be made. That never took the field. Those that went to the dissimilitude of appearance, which was supposed American war, went to destruction. Of the old to keep them distinct from the rest of the nation, Highland regiment, consisting of twelve hunmight disincline them from coalescing with the dred, only seventy-six survived to see their Pennsylvanians, or people of Connecticut. If country again.

The Gothic swarms have at least been multiplied with equal liberality. That they bore no great proportion to the inhabitants in whose countries they settled, is plain from the paucity of northern words now found in the provincial languages. Their country was not deserted for want of room, because it was covered with forests of vast extent; and the first effect of plenitude of inhabitants is the destruction of wood. As the Europeans spread over America, the lands are gradually laid naked.

purchase, the rooms are very heterogeneously filled. With want of cleanliness it were ingratitude to reproach them. The servants having been bred upon the naked earth, think every floor clean, and the quick succession of guests, perhaps not always over-elegant, does not allow much time for adjusting their apartments.

Huts are of many gradations; from murky dens to commodious dwellings.

The wall of a common hut is always built without mortar, by a skilful adaption of loose I would not be understood to say, that neces- stones. Sometimes perhaps a double wall of sity had never any part in their expeditions. A stones is raised, and an intermediate space filled nation whose agriculture is scanty or unskilful, with earth. The air is thus completely excluded. may be driven out by famine. A nation of hun-Some walls are, I think, formed of turfs, held ters may have exhausted their game. I only affirm that the northern regions were not, when their irruptions subdued the Romans, overpeopled with regard to their real extent of territory, and power of fertility. In a country fully inhabited, however afterwards laid waste, evident marks will remain of its former populousness. But of Scandinavia and Germany, nothing is known but that as we trace their state upwards into antiquity, their woods were greater, and their cultivated ground was less.

together by a wattle, or texture of twigs. Of the meanest huts the first room is lighted by the entrance, and the second by the smoke hole. The fire is usually made in the middle. But there are huts or dwellings of only one story inhabited by gentlemen, which have walls cemented with mortar, glass windows, and boarded floors. Of these all have chimneys, and some chimneys have grates.

The

The house and the furniture are not always nicely suited. We were driven once by missing That causes very different from want of room a passage, to the hut of a gentleman, where, may produce a general disposition to seek ano- after a very liberal supper, when I was conther country is apparent from the present con- ducted to my chamber, I found an elegant bed of duct of the Highlanders, who are in some places Indian cotton, spread with fine sheets. ready to threaten a total secession. The num-accommodation was flattering; I undressed bers which have already gone, though like other myself, and felt my feet in the mire. The bed numbers they may be magnified, are very great, stood upon the bare earth, which a long course and such as if they had gone together and agreed of rain had softened to a puddle. upon any certain settlement, might have founded an independent government in the depths of the western continent. Nor are they only the lowest and most indigent; many men of consider-perty may have art and industry, which make able wealth have taken with them their train of Jabourers and dependants: and if they continue the feudal scheme of polity, may establish new clans in the other hemisphere.

That the immediate motives of their desertion must be imputed to their landlords, may be reasonably concluded, because some lairds of more prudence and less rapacity have kept their vassals undiminished. From Raasay only one man had been seduced, and at Col, there was no wish to go away.

In pastoral countries, the condition of the lowest rank of people is sufficiently wretched. Among manufacturers, men that have no pro

them necessary, and therefore valuable. But where flocks and corn are the only wealth, there are always more hands than work, and of that work there is little in which skill and dexterity can be much distinguished. He therefore who is born poor, never can be rich. The son merely occupies the place of the father, and life knows nothing of progression or advancement.

The petty tenants, and labouring peasants, live in miserable cabins, which afford them little more than shelter from the storms. The boor of Norway is said to make all his own utensils. In the Hebrides, whatever might be their ingenuity, the want of wood leaves them no materials. They are probably content with such accommodations as stones of different forms and sizes can afford them.

The traveller who comes hither from more opulent countries, to speculate upon the remains of pastoral life, will not much wonder that a common Highlander has no strong adherence to his native soil; for of animal enjoyments, or of physical good, he leaves nothing that he may not find again wheresoever he may be thrown. Their food is not better than their lodging, The habitations of men in the Hebrides may They seldom taste the flesh of land-animals; be distinguished into huts and houses. By a for here are no markets. What each man eats house, I mean a building with one story over is from his own stock. The great effect of another: by a hut a dwelling with only one money is to break property into small parts. In floor. The laird who formerly lived in a castle, towns, he that has a shilling may have a piece now lives in a house; sometimes sufficiently of meat; but where there is no commerce, no neat, but seldom very spacious or splendid. The man can eat mutton but by killing a sheep. tacksmen and the ministers have commonly Fish in fair weather they need not want; but, houses. Wherever there is a house, the stranger I believe, man never lives long on fish, but by finds a welcome, and to the other evils of exter-constraint: he will rather feed upon roots and minating tacksmen, may be added the unavoid-berries.

able cessation of hospitality, or the devolution The only fuel of the islands is peat. Their of too heavy a burden on the ministers.

Of the houses little can be said. They are sinall, and by the necessity of accumulating stores, where there are so few opportunities of

wood is all consumed, and coal they have not yet found. Peat is dug out of the marshes, from the depth of one foot to that of six. That is accounted the best which is nearest the sur