confident it is not from Glasgow that any application would come for a renewal of expedients, devised at a period when the first principles of political economy were buried in darkness. These principles are too well understood among the leading merchants and manufacturers of that city, to allow them to suppose that, without giving adequate wages, they can procure the hands required for their work; nor will they entertain a doubt that good wages will attract all those they need. Any trifling advantage, that might arise from forcing a superabundant and of course temporary supply of hands, is an interest much too inconsiderable to excite, in that liberal and enlightened body of men, any of the intolerant zeal which some individuals of a different description displayed upon this question. It was from a very different quarter that the adoption of restrictive measures was urged.

If any partial interest, however, is promoted by these measures, it is not that of the Highlands, but of Glasgow and Paisley. The utmost effect that can result from the

regulations that have been adopted, or from any others of the same tendency, can only be to force a greater proportion of the people who must leave the Highlands, to settle in the seats of manufacturing industry, instead of going to America; to force the small tenants to follow the same course as the cotters. If the restrictions were even carried as far as a total prohibition of any person leaving the kingdom, it would not prevent the depopulation of the Highlands, unless the people were also restrained from moving to a different district*.

We hear, indeed, from some gentlemen, that the spirit of emigration threatens such a complete depopulation as will not leave hands even for the necessary business of cultivation. This, however, rests upon mere conjecture, and is not supported by any one example. There is scarcely any part of the Highlands, where the new system of management has come to such full maturity, as to have left no superabundant population, and

and unless also they were empowered by

act of parliament to live without food."

reduced it to the proportion absolutely requisite for the business of the country.

In some districts, the more secluded valleys, lying in the midst of high mountains, retain scarcely any inhabitants; but numbers are every where found along the larger vales, and near the arms of the sea, by which the country is so much intersected. In these situations, where fishing affords some additional resource, and where opportunities of occasional employment occur, many proprietors have laid out small separate possessions or crofts, and have never found any deficiency of occupiers for them. The cotters seem always to prefer a situation of this kind to any prospect they may have in the manufacturing districts; and hence there are, in almost every part of" the Highlands, more of the inferior class of people than enough to carry on all the work that is to be done; a greater population than is proved by experience to be sufficient, among similar mountains in the South of Scotland*.

* See Appendix [M.]

That the population of the Highlands is still more adequate to the demand for labour than in other parts of the kingdom, there is a satisfactory proof in the customary rate of wages. In some of the Southern districts of the Highlands, where the system of sheepfarming has been longest established, where the small tenants are entirely gone, and the alarm of depopulation was felt upwards of forty years ago, wages are higher than in the rest of the Highlands, but still below the rate of the Low Country of Scotland: and still there is, from among the remaining inhabitants even of these parts, a silent but continual migration towards the great centres of manufacturing industry. This drain is, perhaps, no more than sufficient to relieve the country of the natural increase of inhabitants. Be that, however, as it may, it is evident that, if any circumstance should lead to a further diminution of numbers, such as to occasion a want of hands, the consequence would be a rise of wages, which would take away from the temptation to seek employment elsewhere, and, by rendering the situation of the labouring poor

as favourable as in other parts of the of the country, would retain at home their natural increase, till every deficiency should be filled up.

Thus it must appear that emigration pro, duces no real inconvenience even to the dis strict most immediately affected. But these arguments are, perhaps, superfluous; for, if the subject deserves the interference of the Legislature, it is no more than justice, that among the interests that are to be consulted, that of the Highland proprietors ought to be the last of all. They have no right to complain of a change which is their own work, the necessary result of the mode in which they choose to employ their property. Claiming a right to use their lands as they see fit and most for their own advantage, can they deny their tenantry an equal right to carry their capital and their labour to the best market they can find? If the result of this should prove of such extreme detriment to the public welfare, as to call for a restrictive remedy,-if necessity demand a limitation on these natural rights of the peasantry, would not the same prin