IT was not in Agriculture alone that the great principle of giving free scope to individual Mind, and to individual Capital, which is its fruit, became the prime agent in the advancing prosperity of Scotland. It was equally conspicuous and equally powerful in the opening of her Trade and Commerce. In a former chapter' I have referred to the engrossing Monopolies which had been given by early Charters to the old Royal Burghs of the country. Those who have been accustomed to think of Fiscal Protection as specially associated with the interest of Landowners, have little idea how universally this system originated with the only popular Bodies which existed in the Military Ages, or of the extravagant lengths to which commercial exclusiveness was earned on their behalf. For centuries, and by repeated Statutes, the whole Trade and Commerce of Scotland were placed in the hands of a few Communities of ancient date, to the absolute exclusion not only of the whole agricultural classes, but to the exclusion also of all other Towns and Villages which had arisen from time to time in situations favourable for some particular kind of industry. The "liberties" granted to the old Communities were Monopolies in the only correct sense of that word—the sense, namely, in which it means the absolute prohibition of all selling and buying by all persons who do not belong to the privileged Community, so that even their own money and their own goods are made useless for purposes of exchange except through the narrow circle of the Monopolists.' Not a single quarter of corn,—not a single beast of any kind,—not a single cask of wine,—not a single fleece of wool, nor hide of cattle, could be lawfully imported, or even bought and sold, except through the hands of the privileged Freemen of the Royal Burghs. Within the Burghs themselves the Magistrates assumed and exercised the right of regulating and fixing the prices of all kinds of goods, and especially of bread and provisions generally. This was done in the assumed interest of the Community.

Nothing is more remarkable in the History of Scotland than the manner in which this wide, deeply rooted, and oppressive system was gradually invaded and destroyed by the natural action of individual interests, without any previous change of abstract opinion against the general policy on which the system had been ignorantly founded. So late as the reign of Charles II. in 1633, a fresh Act was passed renewing, reviving, and enforcing the older Statutes, and whatever had become more or less obsolete in these Communal Monopolies over the whole Trade and Commerce of the Nation.' This was too much. There was an immediate and strong reaction from the growing energies of individual enterprise and industry. The first great breach which was effected in the system, came through the undermining action of the new Towns and Villages which had no old Charters, and were not included within the charmed circle of the Royal Burghs. The inhabitants of these places could not practically be prevented from buying and selling such articles as they were able to make, or—if they were near the sea—to import. Then came the supporting action of the Landowners on whose Estates these new Town were rising. They had risen and were growing under the powers and rights of Leasing, of Feuing, and of Heritable Jurisdiction, which these Landowners held by Charters erecting their Estates into Baronies of Regality, or into simple Baronies with powers only a little less extensive. Hence these new Towns and Communities were called Burghs of Barony and of Regality. For several centuries there had been more or less of a perpetual struggle on the part of the Royal Burghs to enforce their monopoly, and to crush the newer Towns as nests of Smugglers. On the other hand the great Landowners who held Baronies and Regalities, were naturally interested in the prosperity of the new Towns which were rising under them, and thus became insensibly, but very practically, interested in the extension of individual liberty, and consequently in the freedom of Trade. Accordingly when legal questions arose, and the Royal Burghs prosecuted other Towns for violation of their monopolies, the Landowners sometimes appeared in support of the defence.

The Act of 1633 was too violent to be borne. At last, in 1671, a case arose which brought matters to a head. Falkirk was a Burgh of Regality built on the Estate of the Earl of Callendar. But it was within the area of Monopoly claimed by the Royal Burgh of Stirling. It was prosecuted for allowing its inhabitants, who were "unfreemen," to engage in trade. The case attracted great attention. The Barons of Regality took up arms in a body in favour of a wider liberty. The Duke of Lauderdale himself, who was interested in the rising Town of Musselburgh, was induced to come to Edinburgh to watch the case as it was argued before the Court of Session. It soon appeared that the questions raised touched the whole policy of the Kingdom, and could only be settled by the Legislature itself. A suggestion to this effect by Sir George Mackenzie was taken up by the Lords of Parliament, whose duty it was to prepare Bills; and the result was the Act of 1672,' which effected a temporary compromise between the interests of individual freedom and the old Monopolies in the hands of a few popular Bodies. Parliament declared that the Act of 1633 had extended those monopolies to a degree "highly prejudicial to the common interest and good of the Kingdom." Nevertheless, the monopoly of the Royal Burghs was for the future kept up as regarded both the export and import of many articles of foreign produce, except in so far as private persons of all ranks might import them for their own domestic use alone. On the other hand, the export and sale of all agricultural produce and all native commodities was made free to all the subjects of the Realm. The new Towns, the Burghs of Regality and of Barony, were made free to trade in all manufactures of their own, to export all home produce, and to import many articles required for "tillage or building;" whilst the retail trade of Markets was made absolutely free.

This was a tremendous breach in the exclusive privileges of the old Burghal Communities, and it was the opening of a very wide door for the free action of all individual interests. Accordingly, against the ever widening consequences of this Act the Royal Burghs, which alone were represented in Parliament, carried on an unceasing struggle and protest, loudly calling for its repeal. They did succeed in getting some new Acts passed after the Revolution, fencing and guarding, by new provisions and penalties, the exclusive rights which still remained to them as regards the imports of foreign produce; and at a later date their interest in Parliament, backed by the influence of traditional feelings and opinions which were not yet theoretically abandoned, were sufficiently strong to secure a Clause in the Treaty of Union with England, providing for the security and continuance of their privileges as they then stood. But too much freedom had now been granted to keep out the continued and unceasing pressure of individual Mind. The Courts of Law in all doubtful cases ruled in favour of freedom in the true sense of that word, the sense, namely, of individual liberty. The natural right Of every man to exercise his own faculties in the free disposal of his own means and property, became too wide an instinct to be compatible with even a faint survival of the Communist Monopolies. Yet it may well be regarded with surprise, that, so far as the Statute-Book was concerned, they survived down to our own day. It was not until 1846 that an Act was passed formally abolishing them, and this was passed as the resuif of an inquiry by Royal Commission, which reported that practically they were already dead.

Every step in the long process of self-education through which the Nation passed in this question of Trade Monopolies, is full of historical and of political interest. There are two documents which throw especial light upon that process, which are separate from each other in date by no more than 35 years. The first belongs to the time of the Commonwealth—the second belongs to the time of William in. The Protector, as is well known, contemplated and for a time effected, a complete Union between England and Scotland, both being under one Government, and represented in one United Parliament. It is to the credit of the Royal Burghs of Scotland that a majority of them seem to have voted for Cromwell's policy, which included as one of its main advantages, complete freedom of commercial intercourse between all citizens of the Commonwealth. Struck by the poverty of Scotland and the heavy deficit on its revenue below the cost of its administration, he sent down an experienced Coiimissioner' to inquire into the subject, and especially into the condition of the Royal Burghs. His Report, rendered in 1656, gives an authentic and a very striking account of the almost abject poverty of the country, and of the miserable narrowness of its Commerce. He saw at once that much of this scantiness of Trade was directly connected with the backwardness of Agriculture, and the consequent want of any products to exchange. This condition of Agriculture again he ascribed to the ignorance, poverty, and slothfulness of the people. With a curious insight and perspicacity, he pitched on the most striking symbol of all the waste he saw, and pointed to a "lazy vagrancy of attending and following their herds up and down in their pasturage."' There was consequently no trade from the inland parts. There never had been much ; but what remained was limited to the seaside, and was confined to a few Ports on the East coast, and in or near the Estuary of the Clyde. Glasgow had then only twelve vessels, the biggest of which was 150 tons burden, and most of which were mere boats. They traded to Ireland with small coals in open boats of from four to twenty tons, taking back meal, oats, butter, with barrel staves and hoops. There was a limited trade with France and Norway—coals, plaiding, salt herring, and salmon being the chief articles, for which they got some condiments and prunes. Dundee had suffered severely from the Wars. Her trade had declined, but "though not glorious, yet was not contemptible." She had ten vessels in all, the biggest 120 tons. Ayr was in a sad condition, from the silting up of her river and harbour. "The place was growing every day worse and worse." Newark (now Port-Glasgow) had "some four or five houses besides the Laird's house of the place." Greenock was just such another, only a little larger —the people all fishermen and sailors trading to Ireland and the Isles in open boats; yet in spite of all this leanness in the land, Cromwell's agent had the perception to see, and did not omit to mention the "Mercantile genius" of the people.

Such was the description of a stranger, coming from a wealthier country in 1656. But thirty-five years later we have the description of the Royal Burghs of Scotland given by themselves. They had spent many of the -intervening years in vain endeavours to enforce their monopoly against all their countrymen, and in alternate contests and negotiations with the Landowners who were encouraging the new, unprivileged, individual Traders who were rising everywhere. The Restoration of the Monarchy had brought with it the immediate abandonment and revocation of all Cromwell's policy, including Free Trade with England. This great outlet was lost to Scotland—to all her Towns whether "free" or "unfree." All the more was personal energy and character required for success in the narrowed and restricted paths of industry. The old Royal Burghs did not advance. At last, in 1691, they appointed a Committee to inquire and report on the condition, revenues, resources, and difficulties of every one. A tabulated series of questions was addressed to each. The result was a series of Reports of the highest interest in History and in Politics. One broad result stares us in the face—that almost everywhere the privileged and monopolist Burghs were stagnant or declining, whilst the new Towns which had no privileges, and were even heavily handicapped in the race by having to fight against Communal Monopolies, were as universally prosperous, and were rising every year in wealth and in importance. Mind, set upon is mettle, was everywhere triumphing over routine and usage:—Mind, in the selection of new sites—Mind, in the advantage taken of special opportunities—Mind, in seeing new openings—and everywhere, Mind freed from the stupid levelling of arbitrary Guilds.

Nothing can be more striking than the evidence to this effect. One of the questions asked of all the old Royal Burghs concerned the number and condition of the New Towns of Barony and Regality which existed within the area of their Monopoly. The list given is a list of many of the most important Towns now existing in Scotland. The Royal Burgh of Renfrew enumerates no less than nine new Burghs of Barony and Regality within "their precincts," even the smallest of which had "a much more considerable trade" than themselves. Among these nine we find Paisley, Port- Glasgow, Greenock, and Gourock. The rising trade of all these places was, if possible, to be suppressed, and the Royal Burghs universally refer to it as "highly prejudicial" to their own interests and industry. Even Glasgow was at that time declining—with nearly five hundred houses "waste," whilst those still inhabited had fallen nearly one-third in the rents they fetched. The best houses in Glasgow were at that time worth no more than £8, 6s. a year in Sterling money. Glasgow bitterly complained of the same neighbouring Towns, and of some others, which so vexed the soul of Renfrew. In particular, the little village which was growing up on the shores of "Sir John Shaw's little Bay," Greenock, was described as having "a very great trade both foreign and inland, particularly prejudicial to the trade of Glasgow."

And yet in the midst of these stupidities we have a few evidences that even the Communal Mind was opening to the lessons of experience. In a few cases men began to see that the action of the human Will is subject to certain natural laws, and that when enactments run counter to these, or do not take due note of them, such enactments, however virtuous in motive, are purely mischievous. Thus in 1688, the Convention of Royal Burghs had awakened to the fact that the Sumptuary Laws had been "very prejudicial" to them.' It was turning out that what were called the luxuries of the rich were inseparable from the comforts and necessities of the poor. Costly things were only costly because they were much desired, and because much was consequently given to those who could find, produce, or make them. And a great part of this cost went of necessity to the Muscular Labour, which was the contribution of the poor. Again, the Royal Burghs were beginning to find out that even within their own "precincts," individual enterprise was breaking through the incubus of their communal restrictions. Individual citizens and Burgesses, seeing the success of their neighbours in the "unfree " Towns, were entering into partnership with them in various enterprises and speculations. It is worth while to listen for a moment to the words in which this conduct of men in the free disposal of their own faculties, and of their own property, was denounced by that spirit of tyranny which is never more oppressive than when it is wielded in the supposed interest of a local popular majority. "The Convention being resolved no longer to suffer the privileges of Royal Burghs to be abused and encroached upon by their own Burgesses, who, by joining stocks with unfreemen, inhabitants in the Burghs of Regality and Barony, and other unfree places, both in point of trade and shipping, whereby those unfreemen receive all imaginable encouragement from freemen in Royal Burghs to trade, and that the said freemen do voluntarily and with their own hands destroy the privileges of the Royal Burghs —therefore" the Convention denounced new pains and penalties against all such persons—as disloyal to the Community to which they belonged.

Here was an aperture in the armour of Burghal monopolies which the irrepressible energies of individual interests were quite sure to widen. Partnerships could be easily concealed, and the only result of enforcing inquisi.ion into the use to which men might put their own money, would have been, and doubtless was, that the most enterprising Minds would seek refuge in the new Towns. With them, therefore, the contest was hopeless, and it soon ceased altogether. But for many years after this date, and even after the Union, the exclusiveness of the Guilds in the supposed interest of the Skilled Labour, and of the Retail Trade of the old Burghs, continued unabated. It was reserved for this system as it prevailed in Glasgow, to afford the most signal illustration of its antagonism to the laws of Nature. The site of Glasgow had been chosen without any view to industry even of the earliest and rudest kind. It had not clustered under a Rock Fortress, like Stirling or Dumbarton. It had not arisen beside a natural harbour, like Dundee or Aberdeen. It had not grown up out of a fishing-village, like Greenock or Rothesay. Its nucleus was not even a feudal Castle. Its position had been determined by the Cathedral of St. Mungo, and was originally a mere hamlet of " the Bishop's men" living under the protection of a great Archiepiscopal See. It was not among the number of the most Ancient Royal Burghs of the Kingdom. In the Fifteenth Century its importance was increased by being made the seat of a new University. But this was done through the same influence and agency of the Church to which the Town owed its own foundation. Glasgow was itself, therefore, nothing more than one of the Burghs of Barony on a Church Estate. Two of the Old Royal Burghs, Rutherglen and Dumbarton, long domineered over it, as now Glasgow tried to domineer over Greenock and Paisley. It is true that it stood near the river Clyde, towards which its houses gradually straggled. But the Clyde at that point was distant from the sea, its course was very shallow, and it was being perpetually silted up with shifting sandbanks. This was one of the causes of its decay in Cromwell's time. Only through the new openings which came with the Union did it begin to revive again. But, as a Seaport, it never could have reached its present position without the operation of the Steam Dredge, through which ships of the heaviest burden have long been able to ascend the river, and to lie beside its quays. During the last forty-six years very nearly forty millions of tons of material have been removed from the bed of the Clyde by the Steam Dredge—a mass which would form a conical mountain 513 feet high, with a circumference at the base of one mile and a half.' Yet it is a memorable fact that when the future Inventor of the new Steam Engine, without which dredging on this gigantic scale would have been impossible, came to reside and to open a shop in Glasgow, he was persecuted as an interloper and a poacher on the domain of the Guild of Hammermen. James Watt was then probably known there as an ingenious Mechanic, but he must have also been known as the grandson of one of the earliest Bailies of the "unfree" Town of Greenock, that most presumptuous union of the villages of the Crawfords and the Shaws. The Hammerrnen declared that from the competition of such an "unfree-man," the whole Community would "suffer skaith." A man on whom Nature had bestowed, in richer measure than it had ever been bestowed before, the very individual and the very special gift of mechanical genius, and whose discoveries were destined to raise Glasgow to be one of the greatest Cities of the world, was actually driven from her Burghal "precincts." Fortunately the University had precincts of its own which were outside the "liberties "of the Guilds. Within that sanctum this patient and laborious Mind wrought out the great problem on which its heart, as well as its intellect, was set. It thought and pondered, and weighed and measured, and tried and tried again, until at last the moment of Inspiration came, and one of the most tremendous agencies in the material world became tractable as a little child. It was tamed, yoked, and bound to every variety of human service —an immense contribution indeed, not only to the Common Good of Glasgow, but to the Common Good of all Mankind.

The same natural play of instinct and of motive which had led the Landowners with such immense success to foster individual liberty and enterprise, in the hands of their own Villagers and Feuars, now led them also to rely more and more on the same great principle as equally applicable to their agricultural Tenants. For this purpose the first step to be taken was that, wherever possible, on the expiry of old Leases, their farms should be re-let to individual Tenants. Such Tenants became at once freed from the trammels of Communal Usage, and could move out of the ruts in which the wheels of progress were jammed up to the very axletrees. They could —but were they sure to do so? Here again there was an education of experience—analogous to that which only very slowly and very gradually educated the Towns in the lessons of the new Industrial Age. It soon turned out that neither the mere circumstance of undivided holdings, the additional circumstance of very long Leases, were enough of themselves to secure an improving Agriculture. The reason is obvious. If the sources of all Wealth are Mind, Materials, and Opportunity, it is clearly not enough to have only one, or only two of these sources opened. Materials are useless, and so is Opportunity, and so are both together, if the appropriate qualities of Mind to make use of them are wanting. Significant indications are given in the Reports so often referred to, of the steps of experience through which the Owners of land were taught how best to secure the improvement of the soil. Thus in the Lennox, the perpetual tenure of Feu for a fixed annual payment, had been given over various areas of agricultural land to men who thereby became small Owners, and had all the inducements to improvement which Ownership is reputed to give. But neither the accumulations due to Mind in the past, nor those aspirations of Mind which regard the future, were present to take due advantage of the Material and of the Opportunity. These Feuars belonged originally to the old unimproving class. They had no conception of educating their children for any other employment than that on which they and their fathers had maintained existence. Consequently they went on sub-dividing their lands among a progeny as ignorant and unimproving as themselves. "They thought it a disgrace that their children should be anything but Lairds." This sub-division went on increasing until the little possessions had become so small, in 1794, that some of the Owners could not afford to keep a horse. Then we have the usual sickening detail of constant over-cropping, of "nothing being laid out on improvements, and of the land being scourged to the last extremity." The whole produce could hardly support the families that depended upon it, even with the addition of what was procured by the unremitting labour of the wife and children in spinning and a little weaving? This is an exact description of the results of a similar condition of things now common among the Peasant Proprietors of parts of France, as described by such eye-witnesses as Mr. Hamerton, Lady Verney, and many others.

The lesson against feuing agricultural hand was hardly needed. Land feued is land sold. Feuing is merely one form of total alienation. A "Superior" parts with all the powers and rights of Ownership, except that of receiving a Rent charge. The Feuar becomes the Proprietor. On the other hand, the evidence furnished by the Report of 1794 on Dumbartonshire, is in favour of what are now called Allotments—that is to say, small areas of land let to Labourers and Tradesmen who were intelligent. These were reported to be by no means ill cultivated or unimproved.' On the contrary, they were reported to be as far advanced as any part of the County—at a time too, when the Common Good of the Burgh was lying comparatively waste. On such Allotments the full benefit of individual interest was at work, coupled often with knowledge above the average of that possessed by the old class of Tenants. Feus are an excellent tenure for purposes of Building, and Scotchmen generally will not build on any tenure less secure and permanent. But there is no reason which should induce a Proprietor to give off agricultural land on this tenure. If he wishes to sell, it is best to sell out and out. But the example of those old feus to small Owners in Dumbartonshire is an excellent illustration of the general principle on which all improvements depend.

There was, however, another case in which the teachings of experience were more practically important. Leases of great length are another panacea amongst those who have had no experience, which is often recommended with much confidence. But this also was tried, and with the same result, depending exactly on the same principles. It appears from Professor Walker's Work, published in 1808, that Archibald, third Duke of Argyll, the friend of Culloden, had been induced to give some very long Leases of large farms in Mull—Leases for "three nineteens," or a period of fifty-seven years. He expected the Tenants to set a pattern of industry and improvement" on such length and security of tenure. But the expectation was not fulfilled. When the Leases were half expired the farms were found to be as little improved as any on the Island. The same experiment had been tried in the Island of Islay by Mr. Campbell of Shawfield, who, in 1720, let all his Estate on Leases of the same long duration, with the result that in 1764 that Island had undergone no improvement—with one solitary exception. Flax had been introduced, and became a, source of industry and advantage to the Island. But this one exception was the result, not of the long Leases, but of the only compulsory clause which had been inserted in them by the Proprietor, which was a clause binding the Tenants to cultivate flax.' It thus appeared that the only one item of improvement which had been effected during more than half a century was due, not to the Mind of the Tenant, but to the Mind of the Proprietor— to his forethought, and to his knowledge—in binding men who were comparatively ignorant, to begin a new industry, which of themselves they never would have thought of.

In this one exception to the general result we see the whole secret and the whole philosophy of the only method by which it was then possible to improve the agriculture of Scotland—to arrest the increasing impoverishment of her soil, and to lift her rural population out of the poverty and sloth in which they lived. It was the exercise, in a new direction, of the same Power to which the Parliament of Scotland had often appealed before, not only to secure a Tenantry loyal to the Government, but also to secure such rural improvements as were then known. Educated men were to direct the energies of men less instructed. Mind was to keep its power over Muscle. Very long terms of Lease, during which this power was to be suspended, could not but be mischievous. Most fortunately for the country, few Proprietors had been induced to try an experiment which could not be stopped during the long period of nearly sixty years—although it might be quite evident before one-half that time had expired, that it must end in total failure. In the great majority of cases they had granted no other Leases than those of the ordinary duration of "one nineteen," and at the end of every Lease they inserted stipulations in the new Tacks binding the Tenants to execute certain specified improvements. These, of course, expanded with the expanding knowledge of the day. Proprietors were themselves only in course of being educated; and some were before others in appreciating and accepting the advancing knowledge of a new science. In some points they were almost as slow to break with ancient Usages, and to perceive the mischief of them, as the most ignorant of their Tenants. The heavy dues exacted for "Thirlage," or the maintenance of Mills, were a great evil, and they were not wholly abolished till recent years. But the stipulations in Leases became more and more enlightened and important in their effects. They began generally with stipulations for the making of enclosures, and for the building of better Houses than the old hovels, which were as universal in the Lowlands as in the Highlands. But this rudimentary step of providing for enclosures speedily involved corresponding stipulations for the uses to which enclosed land was to be applied. There were clauses to forbid old habits which were ruinous. There were clauses prescribing new methods which were fruitful—clauses forbidding continuous cropping with Cereals—clauses enjoining an alternation with the new Green Crops—clauses insisting on the use of Sown Grasses—and on the application of due quantities of manure. With the growing knowledge of the cultivating class, and the yearly proofs experienced of increasing produce and of rising values, the necessity for such detailed stipulations gradually abated. The "rules of good husbandry" became a legal phrase, having a definite meaning, and susceptible of judicial interpretation. A class of Tenant farmers arose having themselves ample knowledge, sufficient capital, and technical skill. In proportion as the permanent accommodation and apparatus required for scientific agriculture became more costly, it became more and more the universal habit in Scotland that the Owner should supply that accomrnodation and apparatus along with the land itself. In some cases part of this work was done by the Tenant on stipulated conditions—he making his own calculations for repayment, either by comparative lowness of rent, or by comparative length of Lease—or by both combined.

It is not often that we can enjoy in human affairs the sharp and clear processes of demonstration which are the glorious reward of Physical Research. Yet such—and not less certain—are the proofs now afforded by the history of Scotland in favour of the Powers and Agencies through which her Agriculture was reformed during the latter half of the Eighteenth Century. By all that had happened before the change—by all that ceased to happen wherever it was effected—by all that continued to happen wherever it was hampered or delayed,—it is proved to demonstration that terrible evils and dangers were inseparably bound up with the older system, and with the ignorant habits in which the whole of it consisted. This is one kind of proof. But there is another kind. By all the benefits which the change immediately conferred—by all the increase in these benefits which arose in proportion as it became developed—by all the sacrifice of them wherever it was still delayed,—we can see without the shadow of a doubt, that the new system was founded on Natural Laws, on the recognition which they demand, and on the obedience which they reward. Nature takes no cognisance of stupidity in the sense of allowance or of remission. She does take cognisance of it in the way of punishment. Chronic poverty and frequent famines had been, as we have seen, the punishment in Scotland of the ignorant wastefulness of its traditionary agricultural customs. So now when Mind had been awakened, and when its energies, wielded by individual men, had been turned with better knowledge to the improvement of the soil, Nature took notice of it by a lavish increase of her fruits. It is a striking fact that the "iii years "—the bad seasons—of 1781-2 were the last which afflicted any large part of Scotland with severe distress and the danger of famine. In those years the new knowledge, and the new class of Tenants who were able to make any use of it, were as yet established only in some parts of the country. Everywhere else the old usages were still supreme—the Runrig cultivation—the promiscuous grazing—the wretched Cattle—the not less wretched Oats and Bear. The consequence was that over no less than fifteen of the Counties of Scotland, a population of not less than 111,521 souls were only rescued from starvation by charitable collections.' After this date down to our own times there have been bad seasons again and again recurring at about the usual intervals—but never have they had the same effect—except in the few remaining fastnesses of the ancient ignorance. These fastnesses have chiefly been in the Hebrides, and in a few Districts of the Northern Highlands —always where, only where, and in proportion as, the old stupidities have resisted and survived.

But the story of this resistance is so curious and so instructive that it must be shortly told.

We have seen how in 1739, under the advice of Culloden, the first great step had been taken on the Hebridean Estates of the Argyll family—that of redeeming the class of Sub-Tenants from their servitudes to the Tacksmen under whom they universally held at Will. In some cases they were themselves raised to the position of Tacksrnen—in all cases they were freed from indefinite exactions. We have seen, too, how shocked Culloden had been by the wasteful and barbarous husbandry he witnessed in Tyree. But on the other hand he did not see his way to any immediate or compulsory change in these methods of cultivation. He probably thought that self-interest, now called into play under new conditions of security, would be enough to bring about reform. Wielding the powers of Ownership, he had abolished one deeply-rooted and most ancient custom—the custom of indefinite Servitudes. He did not know, or perfectly understand, that nothing but the same powers, wielded with like determination and like intelligence, could uproot those other Servitudes—as old and as destructive —under which the people were chained and bound amongst each other in a perfect tangle of obstructive usages.

Culloden and all that generation passed away, with his two friends, Duke John and Duke Archibald (Lord Islay). The struggle was unceasing to get the people to amend their culture. Then came the Potato—then the Kelp. Subsistence became comparatively easy, and was sometimes abundant. But all this came to a people unprepared by previous habits, or by any new aspirations, to profit by it. Nothing was saved or stored. They lived, and ate, and multiplied. From the date of my Grandfather's succession in 1770, he issued ceaseless instructions for the improvement of the people. He insisted in his Leases on enclosures, to save the arable lands from constant invasion by whole herds of useless horses and lean cattle. He insisted on better Houses. He tried his best to prevent the systematic waste of Barley by illicit distillation. He tried to establish Fisheries, lie tried to stop the destructive habit of breaking up pasture on Sands which were liable to be blown. When Kelp became an important resource he left so large a part of it to the workers that they held their land practically for nothing, because the whole rent, and often much more, came out of Kelp. His rent from 13,000 acres of land did not amount to more than the saleable value of the Barley crop alone. All other produce,—potatoes, lint, sheep, milk, butter and cheese, poultry, eggs, etc., were not counted at all as contributing to rent, because the Proprietor said "he wished the Tenants to live plentifully and happily." It was all in vain—as regards any permanent improvement. Plenty is a relative term. Produce which was plenteous for a population of 1676 persons in 1769, would not be plenteous to a population which had risen to 2776 in 1802. In that year the condition of the Island alarmed his agent, Mr. Maxwell of Aros, an excellent and able man who was maternal grandfather of the late Dr. Norman Macleod. His Report is a repetition of the worst accounts to the Board of Agriculture in 1794. Subdivision had reduced the holdings to starvation point. The Cows did not produce calves above once in two or three years. Troops of Horses, used only for dragging seaweed at one time of the year, preyed all the rest of the year on the exhausted pastures. Hosts of Cottars living only on the wages of Kelp- burning oppressed the unfortunate Tenants. The quality of the Barley was deteriorating rapidly. Ignorance of all husbandry, and stubborn attachment to the old customs, offered "arduous obstacles to the improvement of the Island." The additional One Thousand people who had grown up in recent years could not be supported. Iy Grandfather had begun to entertain the proposal to help them to the Colonies. But in 1803 there arose, as we have seen, that panic against Emigration described before. The old Duke seems to have deeply shared in it. His soldierly spirit was stirred, too, in favour of the men who had enlisted in the Fencible Regiments which were about to be disbanded at the Peace. He determined to try a new plan. He resolved to break down and cut up several of the larger Farms falling out of Lease, and to settle as many of the people as he could on smaller but separate Holdings of a size calculated to support a Family with ease. But one essential part of this scheme was enclosure —individual possession—the abolition of promiscuous waste in the form of Runrig. He employed a professional Surveyor to lay out the, new "Crofts," which were to be capable of supporting not less than 16 Cows.

This most benevolent scheme was met by the most obstinate resistance on the part of the people. Rather than give up the wasteful habits of Runrig, they declared they would rather go to join the emigration which Lord Selkirk was then leading to North America. The Duke's agent at the time was a Highlander himself, intimate with the condition and habits of the people. Yet he writes almost in despair with their infatuated blindness to their own obvious interests, and to the value of the reforms which had by that time become accepted by every educated man. He suggested to the Duke a postponement of the plan. Yet time was needed to make even a beginning, and the powers of Ownership were once more asserted to insist on the abolition of a system so destructive and so dangerous. By firmness, and by assistance given in fencing, the division and individuality of the arable lands was at last effected. The grazings only continued to be used in common, but even on these the amount of stock was carefully fixed and apportioned to each man.

Now followed a most remarkable series of facts. The old Field-Marshal died in 1806. In one respect his policy was entirely successful. The separation of holdings—the individualisation of the arable areas—resulted, almost automatically, in a great increase of produce. But it had another result which was not foreseen. It facilitated and gave a new impulse to further subdivision. Under the Runrig system the introduction of an additional shareholder required assent. In settling this there were at least some difficulties to be overcome in the way of subdivision. Under separate holdings of the arable area these difficulties were much diminished. Increasing produce and a greater freedom in subdividing, were at once taken advantage of by a people whose intelligence was not developed in proportion to its opportunities. Nothing but the continued exercise of the powers of Ownership in fighting a watchful and uphill battle against inveterate habits, could have been successful. Instead of this there was an almost complete abandonment of all control. There came a Reign— not of Law, or of Mind—but of what in medical language is called "Amentia." My Grandfather's Successor' lived for thirty-three years—during the whole of which time the powers of Ownership may be said to have been suspended. He was a perfect type of the kind of Landowner who was adored in Ireland—one who never meddled or interfered with the stupidities of Custom. Celtic usages were allowed their course. Subdivision went on at a redoubled rate, and population kept up even more than pace. In 1822 the Farms which had been held by small Tenants ever since Culloden's time were crowded with a population of 2869 souls; whilst the newly divided farms, five in number, held no less than 1080 more. There had been a bad season in 1821. The Cattle were almost starved, and there were many cases of great misery among the people. Once more, Kelp came to the rescue. There was an extraordinary supply of it, and this, with wholesale insolvency admitted and allowed, tided over the crisis for a time. Next came another tremendous blow. The whole Kelp Trade rested on Fiscal Protection, and on two special taxes alone. One was upon Spanish Baril la—a Plant growing not in the sea, but on the land, and rich in the Alkalis which seaweed afforded. The other impost was the tax on Salt—a tax most oppressive to numberless industries, and specially injurious to the Highlands, through the impediments thrown in the way of the trade in fish. From common salt, which is a salt of Soda, the same important Alkali could be made into other combinations. Both these taxes were repealed—one in 1823, the other in 1826. The trade of the Kingdom as a whole was immensely benefited. But the special, and the only manufacture of the Hebrides, and of the adjacent coasts, was destroyed.

In all other countries when Mines are exhausted, or when Mills are closed, or when any other local industry is extinguished, the people who had been so employed invariably move off to other fields where their labour can be made remunerative to themselves, and useful to the world. But the Hebrideans never thought of this. There is, nevertheless, no suspension of the laws of Nature for the special and exclusive protection of any particular set of men, merely because they belong to a particular race, or because they live in an Island, or because they speak a particular language. Failing the Kelp trade, they still held on by the Potato. The consequence was that the "ill years," which must every now and then recur, always smote them with the misery and famine which had in former generations smitten the rest of Scotland. In 1836-7 there was terrible misery all over the Highlands wherever the old system still survived, and especially in Skye. We have an account of it, and of the causes which produced it, from an educated Highlander, who writes with that high intelligence of his race which never fails to be conspicuous where-ever Highlanders are lifted above the level of the old Paternal Customs. I need not repeat his story. It is a mere duplicate of the course of events which we have followed in Tyree. Everything that had been done in the panic of 1803 against emigration, had simply ended in aggravating the evil. Even the making of the Caledonian Canal, begun in the same year, from which much was hoped, had done no permanent good. The Skye men had indeed worked at it. Whilst the construction of it had lasted, between 300 and 400 of them had earned from £3500 to £4000 in the half-year. But there was no change of habits—no elevation in the standard of living. On the contrary, it was becoming lower and lower from the wretched husbandry, and from the stimulated growth of population. The one Parish of Kilmuir had in 1736 only 1230 souls. Even this was far above the population it had supported in the Epoch of the Clans. This is repeatedly and emphatically stated by Mr. Macgregor, and it reminds us that even then the population of the old Military Ages had been far exceeded. Yet nineteen years later, the population had risen to 1572. In 1791 it was 2060. In 1831 it was 3415, and in this year of renewed famine 1836-7, it amounted to about 4000.

It will be observed that this exorbitant increase went on after the Kelp trade had been destroyed. There was nothing whatever to justify, or account for such increase except an ever- increasing dependence on the Potato, and a corresponding lowering of the conditions of life. There vas not the slightest advance in agricultural knowledge or industry. On the contrary —no account given by wandering Englishmen or by Low Countrymen, which may be thought highly coloured by anti-Celtic prejudices, can exceed in wretchedness the account by this descendant of the Clan Gregor in respect to the industrial habits of the Skyemen among whom he lived so late as 1838. The women alone did all the harrowing; whilst every implement and every method of cultivation were alike barbarous and ineffective. Next came the final blow—the Potato disease of 1846. By that time the population of Tyree had increased to about 5000 souls—an increase probably without parallel in any purely rural district in the world. It may bring this abnormal multiplication more strikingly home to us, when we observe the fact that this single Hebridean Island added to its population, during about 80 years a greater number of souls than were added to the population of the Cathedral City of Glasgow during all the generations which elapsed between the War of Independence and the Reformation.' It did this under the stimulus of a manufacture which rested wholly on Protective Duties injurious to the rest of the community—under the influence of a mindless contentment with a very low diet—and of an indulgence, not less mindless, in instincts which are natural in themselves, but which, like all other natural instincts, require the control of an enlightened Will. The love of offspring is a natural instinct which we share with all creatures. But educated men do not anywhere encourage their children to build hovels round their home, without reference to adequate means of maintaining a civilised existence. Even among the Birds of the Air, and the creatures of the Field, there is a wonderful, and even a mysterious law by which a wholesome dispersion is secured, and limited areas of subsistence are kept from being overstocked. It is a curious fact, quite common in the Highlands, that small areas of arable land which can never be enlarged from the nature of the country, are frequented by a single pair of Partridges, producing a single covey every year, which, even when never shot, never remain to multiply. It is true that Man has powers and resources which the lower animals have not. It is true that with every new mouth that is born, two new hands are born to feed it. But it is not true that the two hands have power in all circumstances to earn new subsistence. Sustenance cannot be sensibly increased upon St. Kilda. Nature intervenes and kills off the children by a horrible and mysterious disease. Even those that remain live largely upon charity; and are now said to exhibit the moral deterioration which such dependence always causes, when it becomes habitual. This is an extreme case. But it is very little more extreme than the case of other Hebridean Islands. The love of Race is another natural instinct. But educated men do not cling to spots of birth when wider regions invite to wider duties, and to more fruitful works.

Sooner or later Nature finds out the sins and blindnesses of all her children. We know what were the results of the Potato famine in Ireland, where it fell on a population which had never been redeemed from a terrible continuity of Celtic usages, and had never enjoyed the opportunities afforded to the people of Tyree, by the abolition of Middlemen, by the formation of separate holdings, and by rents kept down to a low rate on purpose to let them live with exceptional ease. The same effects resulted where all these opportunities had been afforded, but where they had not been put to the right use by minds adequately prepared. There was imminent danger of starvation. It was prevented by charity—the charity of Proprietors generously aided by the charity of the Public. This charity was rendered effective in the Hebrides by the comparatively limited area of distress. The rest of Scotland suffered great losses in one article of produce and of sale. But no part of Scotland suffered any danger of famine, except those parts of it where the old mediaeval ignorances had been suffered to survive. There never was so clear a lesson. Conviction was forced on the poor people of the island of Tyree, and they addressed to Sir John M'Neill, who was then at the head of the Board of Supervision for the Poor, an earnest and even a passionate petition asking for assistance to emigrate to Canada. I have nowhere seen a more forcible and more conclusive plea set forth in favour of this remedy.' It fell to the lot of my Father and myself to respond to it. At great cost we enabled upwards of a thousand people to go where they could put to use the admirable elements of character which never fail to be exhibited by Highlanders when they move out into the stream of the world's progress. When I visited Canada and the United States in 1879, I had the warmest invitations from Highlanders who had emigrated; and the accounts of success were universal,

I take but little merit to myself, that in the face of proofs so ample, and of results so terrible, I determined—with due regard to local circumstances, and to a past which could not be too suddenly reversed without hardship—to return to the principles which—starting everywhere from the same conditions—had secured the wealth, the comfort, and the civilisation of the rest of Scotland. Subdivision was stopped. Existing subdivisions, when vacant from death, insolvency, or migrations, were never put up to competition, as they would have been under Middlemen. They were invariably added to the holding of the nearest neighbours who could take them. Some new Tenants from the Low Country were brought in, who could show new methods, and introduce some circulation of ideas into a stagnant air. By, the steady prosecution of this process during forty years, some approach has been gradually made to the condition of things which was aimed at by the old Field-Marshal. With the increasing size of holdings, comfort and prosperity have steadily advanced. But the tendency to revert to ancient habits reappears from time to time; and the encouragements of a very ignorant sentiment " out of doors" has lately led to an attempt to go back through the paths of violence to the ruinous practices of the past, in spite of all reason, and in spite of a long and a terrible experience.

I have spoken of the wonder that must often strike us when we look back on the slowness of Mankind in opening their eyes to the most obvious facts of nature, and to conclusions of the reason which now appear to us quite as obvious as the facts. There is one signal example of this connected with the history of a large part of Scotland, which applies not to the poorer, but to the more educated classes, and especially to the Landowners. An immense area of the Western and Northern Highlands is occupied by high and very steep mountains. We have seen that only little bits of them were ever put to any use at all under the old system, and even those bits were used for only about six weeks in the year. For several generations it had been known in the Border Highlands that such mountains were most valuable grazings for sheep, which could be fed in thousands upon their steepest surfaces, and could remain on them all the year round. Yet it was only very slowly and very late that it dawned upon Farmers, or upon Landowners, that the Highland mountains could be put to the same use, and could be thus redeemed from all but absolute waste. The enormous addition made by this discovery to the natural produce of the country, is very apt to be forgotten now, because of the great ignorance prevalent on the extent of area which was thus, for the first time, made contributory to the comforts and sustenance of mankind. On my own estate there is one Mountain which, with its spurs and peaks and shoulders, occupies more than 20,000 acres. Of this great area only about 500 acres are arable, and many of these have been reclaimed and enclosed at great cost, within the last fifty years. Of the rest, probably not more than 1000 acres would be available for Cattle. All the remainder, at least 18,500 acres, are very steep, and many of them either actually, or almost, precipitous. No other animal except Sheep could, or ever did, consume the grasses which clothe these surfaces more or less abundantly. Yet they can and do feed some 8700 Sheep, without inter fering with the comparatively few Cattle which were ever reared in the olden time. If, now, we look at an Orographical Map of the Highlands, we shall find that this case is the typical case of the Western Highlands and of the Northern Highlands, embracing the larger half of the Counties of Inverness, Ross, and Sutherland. Sir John Sinclair calculated that before the introduction of sheep-farming, the whole produce exported from all the Highlands did not exceed £300,000 worth of very lean and poor Cattle. Tinder Cheviot Sheep he shows that the same area would produce at least twice the value of mutton, or £600,000, besides all the Wool, equal to a further sum of £900,000. This Wool, again, when manufactured, would represent a value of at least £3,600,000 of Woollens. The total difference therefore between the produce of the Country, under the new system as compared with the old, was as the difference between £600,000, and £4,200,000—this difference being all added to the comfort and resources of Mankind.

It does seem almost incredible that Highland Landowners and Tenants should have been so slow to find out an application and a use for the Moors and Mountains they occupied or possessed, a use which in reality constituted as much the addition of a new country as the recovery of the Bedford Level from the Sea. The Mountains round Moffat in Dumfriesshire are hardly less steep or less high than the Mountains round Loch Maree in Ross-shire, or round Loch Laxford in Sutherland. The Highland Mountains had even an advantage over the Border Mountains, that they were nearer to the Gulf Stream, and snow lay less long upon them. Yet the stupidities of Custom and Tradition were so difficult of removal that Sheep-farming spread as slowly as the Potato, or the manufacture of Kelp. No doubt the new Sheep-farming involved some local displacement of population, because Sheep could not be supported without access to low ground, which was sometimes occupied by "Clachans," liable to periodical distress and famine. But this displacement of population was far less than that which had been involved all over the Low Country by the abandonment of Runrig, and in the Border Counties by the Sheep-farming which had superseded the Moss-troopers. Neither again did it involve necessarily in all cases very large farms. The Highland Counties have at this moment a much greater variety of holdings in respect to size, than the most thriving Lowland Counties. Neither again did it involve any general substitution of Lowland farmers for Highlanders. Some of the earliest sheep-farmers were Highlanders who had acquired capital by industry. Others were Lowlanders who brought knowledge of management, and imparted it, to the immense advantage of the country. It remains therefore a wonderful example of the slow progress of new ideas that the Highland Proprietors adopted Sheep-farming on the hills so slowly and so late as they actually did. Although it began as soon as 1768, it was not universally applied to the wasted areas till as late as 1823.

But there is another phenomenon, even more wonderful, which is equally common—and that is, the coming back of old blindnesses—the revival of old errors—and even the passionate return to practices which Nature has condemned. Yet this phenomenon has its analogue in the material world as well as in the World of Mind. It is now universally admitted that Development, or Evolution, does not always work in one direction. It works downwards as well as upwards. As Tennyson expresses it—"Thronèd races may degrade."' There is even reason to believe in a constant force tending to revert to earlier and ruder stages of existence. Whether this be so or not, the fact is certain that there are many creatures that fall from a comparatively high, to a comparatively low, organisation. The freedom—nay the very organs—of locomotion are abandoned and cast away. Even the noble faculty of vision is lost. The creature becomes fixed to a bit of rock, or to the shells and exuvie of dead things. So it is with Man. At the beginning of this Work I have referred to the influence exerted over our longings and desires by the pressure of modern life—the "fuinum strepitumque Rom"—the strain of Work in the pursuit of Wealth—or the not less trying strain of Mind in a speculative age in the quest of satisfying Truth. All this tends to throw a most false glamour on the ages which have passed. The old tastes for a Wild Life return upon us, in- herited through many generations.

Most of us know the feeling. It is pleasant to return to childhood, and the pleasures of imagination. I never read any detailed account of so-called "primitive" life in any of the happier climates of the world, without at least some passing feelings of desire to join in its freedom and pursuits—to live in Pile Dwellings on the lagoons of a Coral Sea, or in huts on the tops of trees—to watch the Birds of Paradise in the Forests of New Guinea—to shoot reedy arrows at the great Ground Pigeon—or to hunt for the wondrous hatching-mounds of the Brush Turkey. Not less attractive to other tastes would it be to go back to the Epoch of the Clans,— to sail, and to fight, and to spoil in beautiful Galleys, with all their bravery of war. It is perhaps less easy for civilised men to think with any envy of the old Celtic habits—of the wattled huts, jointly inhabited with the cows and calves—of the perpetual atmosphere of Peat-reek—of all the hardest labour left to women, and of seeing them yoked to Harrows as described by Mr. Macgregor, writing as late as 1838. But imagination has a wonderful power of winnowing out all facts that are disagreeable, and of resting only on those which have a flavour of the picturesque. We have seen that not only the charm and glamour of these old habits, but the actual delight of exercising the powers of" Chiefery" with which they were inseparably connected, had been strong enough to corrupt the noble chivalry of Norman Barons, so that even a man near in blood to Robert the Bruce had descended to the level of a mere "Wolf of Badenoch." We have seen how, in a much later day, another conspicuous example of the same influence had been displayed by Sir James Macdonald, who was known in the Palaces of the Kingdom as a most polished and accomplished Knight—but who, when he returned to Islay or Kintyre, became the bloody and the fierce 1iIacsorlie. In our own time it has too often an influence not indeed so formidable in action, but hardly less corrupting in opinion. Harmless in the form of mere sentiment and poetry, it ceases to be harmless when it perverts History and loosens the hold of Mind over the rights and obligations upon which every Society must be built.

In this form it acts as a solvent upon Opinion which is the root of Law. It subordinates the Reason to Fancy—it elevates the ignorant Declamation of the Platform over the responsible decisions of the Bench. This is a return to the power of "Chiefery" not in its ancient and nobler form but in a new and debased embodiment. It is a reversion, as Darwin expresses it, in Biology, to an old and ruder type. It is however worse than this. It is a mere travesty and corruption of that violence against which the Monarchy and the civilisation of Scotland had to wage for centuries one long continuous war. It is the true modern analogue of the worst Anarchy of the Clans.

It is curious to observe the different direction which this kind of sentiment has taken in regard to the country formerly inhabited by the Border Clans. That country has been infinitely more changed and more depopulated than the Celtic Highlands. The vast stretches of moorland, and the long vista of vacant Glens which strike the eye on the borders of Dumfriesshire and the Upper Wards of Lanarkshire, are far more desolate of human habitation than any similar areas in the Highlands possessing equal possibilities of reclamation. But more than this: the greener and lower Valleys which are so beautiful in Selkirk and Roxburgh, are almost entirely destitute of the smaller Holdings which are abundant and successful all over the Counties of Argyll and Inverness. How does true Poetic Sentiment deal with the memory of the days when these Valleys were full of a military population—when a few powerful Chiefs could summon at the shortest notice armies of 10,000 men? It sings of those days indeed. But the Singer does not pretend to wish that they should return. Let us listen for a moment to the melodious words in which the great Minstrel of the Borders recalled the Military Ages of that pas-
toral land in which, when a child, he lifted his little hands to the lightning in a raging Thunderstorm,' and shouted with excitement "Bonny, bonny!":-

"Sweet Teviot! On thy silver tide
The glaring bale-fires blaze no more:
No longer steel-clad warriors ride
Along thy wild and willowed shore;
Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill,
All, all is peaceful, all is still,
As if thy waves, since Time was born,
Since first they rolled upon the Tweed,
Had only heard the shepherd's reed,
Nor started at the bugle-horn."

This is delightful and legitimate. But more than this would be childish. Scott himself became a Landowner in that very country—and latterly he possessed no inconsiderable Estate. He built a Baronial Hall. But he did not restore a Cottier Tenantry. He enclosed and planted. But he planted Larches. He did not invite the Workmen making high wages in Hawick or Galashiels to come back to starve on patches of corn and of potatoes along the once populous "Haughs" of Tweed. The unreality on which much of this kind of sentiment is founded was never more curiously illustrated than when the Government chose as the Head of a Commission appointed to inquire into the Small Tenants of the North and West, a Scotch Peer' whose own Estate is situated among the long "cleared" sheep pastures of the Southern Highlands, and in a locality which is specially described by Sir Walter Scott in Marinion as a perfect picture of solitude and depopulation.' This distinguished Scotchman has given elaborate advice to Highland Proprietors for the extension—not merely of small Holdings —but of the special form of these which is least advantageous—that of Joint or- Township Farms. There is nevertheless not the slightest reason to believe that he himself or any of his brethren, would consent to cut up any portion of their great sheep grazings, or of their comfortable and single arable Farms, for the purpose of restoring the population of the Military Ages. Many Owners in the Lowland Counties now wish that they had, as the Highland Counties have, more small Farms, and fewer of the largest class. But no man who knows anything of Agriculture, or of the influences which promote its progress, would ever recommend the revival of the old Township System. In my own experience I have always found that the moment any "Crofter" becomes exceptionally industrious and exceptionally prosperous, he earnestly desires, above all things, that his grazings as well as his arable land, should be fenced off from those of his neighbours, so that he may have the exclusive use of his own faculties in the better tillage of his ]and and in the better breeding of his stock. The multiplication of small Farms, indeed, such as will profitably employ the whole industry and capital of individual men, is an object most desirable. But the conditions of success vary with every locality, and can only be determined by local knowledge. It cannot be settled by a vague desire to revive the usages of a time which has passed away for ever.

Sentiment, however, must never be surrendered to those who have little knowledge and no balance. Such are the men who are very apt to claim it as their own, whilst instructed men are too apt to leave it in their hands. Sentiment can be strong as well as weak—healthy as well as sickly, manly as well as mawkish. It can fix its enthusiasms on what is really good, as it too often does on what is only picturesquely bad. The cruelties, treacheries, disloyalties, and brutalities of the Clans were mere developments of corruption, due to the divorce between them and all settled Government and Law. They represented nothing but anarchy in their relations with the Nation and the Kingdom, and nothing better in their relations with each other. But the root and the principle of their organisation was that of a Military Tribe, recruiting from all directions,—practising obedience,— acknowledging authority,—and loving its hereditary transmission from those who had first afforded guidance, conduct, and protection. This is a constructive, and not a destructive or anarchic principle. It needed only, to be turned in a right direction to become one of the steadiest of all foundation-stones for the building up of a great structure in the light and air of a higher civilisation. It was thus that in the transition between the two Ages, the broken fragments of a hundred Septs enlisted under the Banner of the Black Watch, and began the immortal services of the Highland Regiments. Yet this is only a late and picturesque incident in a long series of events. Nothing is more striking or more poetic in the history of Scotland than the slow and arduous processes by which the rough energy of the Military Ages was transformed under the ages of industry and of peace. Malcolm Canmore had begun the transformation by his own Union with the Daughter of another blood. Robert the Bruce continued it by the welding of broken Races in the heat and fire of Battle. Between the War of Independence and the Union of the Crowns it was one long, continuous, constant, struggle. But by slow and steady steps the work was done, and Scotland became a Nation with a noble and a settled Jurisprudence. Our Kings became our only Chiefs: our Country became our only Clan. Her Law, the best symbol of her History, and the best expression of her Mind, became the only authority to which we bowed, and the only protection to which we trusted. Under its shelter man could have confidence in man, because there was no fear of that which even the old Celts ranked with Pestilence and Famine—the breaking of the Bonds of Covenant. In this high field of Human Energy,—the establishment of that confidence in Law which is the nearest approach we can ever make to the methods of the Divine Government,—Scotland may well be proud of the old beginnings, and of the steady growth, of all her National Institutions.

Among these Institutions there is one of purely native origin which, perhaps, as much as any other, is a striking embodiment of this principle, and a splendid illustration of its effects. I refer to her Banking system. Barter, as we all know, is the earliest form of Exchange, and under that system if the Seller can bring his produce to a market, and the Buyer can carry it away in safety, no higher kind of security is required.. Then comes Money as an abstract representative of Value, immensely facilitating Exchange, by providing an article with which, and for which, everything can be got from somebody. Lastly comes Credit, the highest and the most powerful of all agencies for promoting the intercourse of men. It is the highest because it is most purely the work of Mind—the most absolute expression of confidence in the universal authority of Law. In other countries the intervention of the State has been required to establish Banks, and the work assigned to them has been lauded as among the highest efforts of Statesmanship. In Scotland an immense network of Institutions for the universal diffusion and organisation of Credit, has been spread, as it were, by a natural growth indigenous to the soil. In Scotland there is a Bank for about every 4000 souls of the total population. Ten of them represent a paid-up capital of above Nine Millions sterling, and Deposits to the amount of more than Eighty Millions; their Branches are all over the country. Thus everywhere men are able to take advantage, not only of their savings, but of the credit in which they stand for their character in business—that is for their honesty, their industry, and for all the mental aptitudes which give promise of success. The whole of this vast system of Credit is founded upon confidence in the Law—constituting a Wages Fund co-extensive with the possibilities of Industry and of Knowledge. It would all crumble at the touch of Anarchy. Under the confidence which this Reign of Law ensures, Mind in all its forms, whether of enterprise, or of invention, or of organisation, or only of patient perseverance, has made an entirely new world of Scotland. It has reclaimed her soil, it has deepened her rivers, it has built her. commercial navies, it has brought into her harbours the products of the most distant regions, and it has redeemed her own people, immensely multiplied, from chronic poverty and frequent famines.

There must be something wrong with ourselves, and not with the Order of Nature, or with the Designs of Providence, if we can find none of the pleasures of the Imagination, and none of the gratifications of Sentiment, in changes such as these. Nothing can be more certain than that we are but accomplishing part at least, and an essential part, of our mission in the world when we turn the desert into the fruitful field. Nothing can be more certain than that it is our duty to put our Talents out to Use, and not to hide them in a napkin. Most of these Talents have their poetic side. Slothfulness is not one of the Christian virtues, even when it is passed amidst picturesque surroundings. The Hebrew People were not devoid of Poetry or of Sentiment, and yet their Songs and their Prophecies are full of the imagery derived from the improvement of the soil, as well as of the precious and beautiful things which were brought in Commerce by the ships of Tarshish. With them the Olive, and especially the Vine, were the symbols of cultivated fertility; and in connection with the Vineyard, in particular, we have the most touching and passionate allusions to all the care and labour bestowed upon Enclosures as the best type and symbol of the work needed in the higher cultivation of the soul. The "fencing" of land, and the "gathering out the stones thereof," and the "planting" of it, and the building "in the midst of it," are as apposite a description of the work of Reclamation in Scotland as it was of the same work in Palestine. The taking away the "Hedge thereof," and the "breaking down the wall thereof" are used as the best Images of utter Desolation,' whilst the ravages of the wild creatures which fences are intended to exclude are similarly used to typify the invasions of the sacred fields by the arms of Heathendom.' There is too, in the Book of Proverbs, a striking description of the ignorant and lazy habits which had afflicted Scotland: "I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof had been broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep : so shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man."' Yet, beyond all question, the "pruned vine" is a much less picturesque object than the Briers and the Thorns which ignorance or violence may allow to choke it. On the other hand, the clustered grapes,—and the winds passing over fields of corn,—and the flocks browsing in perspective upon great plains,—and the sheep herded on the mountains—are all pictures full of poetry—far higher than that which circles round the deeds and the pursuits of half-barbarian Man.

We cannot go back to the Primitive Ages, whatever else we do. We must live in our own time, and we must put to culture and to use, such talents as come to us from the inheritance of the Past, and from the opportunities of the Present. It is a delusion to suppose that the sin of covetousness belongs specially to the later ages of the world. The naked Savage covets more of his beads, or of his bits of iron, as much as the civilised Man covets some new indulgence. Modern Industry has its own dangers, and its own evils, but the truth is that the pursuit of Wealth under the conditions of civilisation, having in it more of Mind than the same pursuit under conditions of Barbarism, tends to be better and higher in its moral character. There is less in the mere getting, and more in the intellectual interest belonging to the processes through which the getting comes. The Machine Maker thinks as much of the perfection and accuracy of his work, as of the price he gets for it. The Shipbuilder thinks most of the fine "lines"—of the speed, and capacity, and strength of his ships. The Skilled Workman rejoices in his manual dexterity, and takes a pleasure, purely intellectual, in the triumph of his hands—in the straightness of his furrow - in his mastery over some difficult and intractable material. One of my earliest recollections is of the laborious and conscientious pains bestowed by my Father, as a Mechanic, on the high finish of the articles he produced—on the perfect symmetry of form—on the joinings which the finest touch could not detect —on the harmonies of colour and of substance. Throughout all the Kingdom of Labour—using that word, not in its vulgar' but in its highest meaning, as including above all the Labour of the Brain—there is a Hierarchy or Gradation of rank corresponding to the degree in which the mere getting of Value is subordinate, and the production of excellence is predominant. The lowest rank must be assigned to the most purely mechanical— such as Commission Agencies—in which there is no skill, although the work may be useful, or even necessary, as part of the machinery of Distribution.

And most assuredly in this Hierarchy of Labour the work of the Improver and Reclaimer of Land stands very high in the variety and dignity of the motives which come before the mere love of gain. Time may be on his side, but generally it is time belonging to a somewhat distant future. A single successful voyage, one single turn of the market, may make and has often made the fortune of a Merchant. One happy thought flashing on the Brain of the Inventor, may reward him at a stroke with abundant wealth. But the fruits of the Earth cannot generally be multiplied so quickly, and we see by the history and experience of the past, how difficult it has been to exercise the foresight, and to submit to the immediate sacrifices, which the laborious steps of a reformed Husbandry have demanded of those who live by it. The love of Agriculture is among the original instincts of our nature—as distinct from others as, in early ages, is the love of the Chase, or, in all ages, the love of Decoration. And amongst these original instincts it is unquestionably the highest and the best, both from the simplicity of its character and from the beneficence of its effects. With advancing education it suffers no decay. On the contrary, it charms and elevates the mind in proportion as it exercises us in our great commission over Nature, and brings us into closer contact with those "abodes where self-disturbance hath no part." The sentiment which prefers to these attractions the far-off echoes of the Spear and Shield, or the alternating indulgence of fierce activity and of selfish idleness, is a sentiment unworthy alike of true Poetry, of true Religion, and of true Philosophy.

I have spoken of the natural causes which lead to forgetfulness of the work of Ownership in the Agricultural Improver—causes connected with the very completeness of that work, and with the total obliteration of the older surfaces which have been reclaimed. These are causes which lie in mere ignorance and want of thought. But, strange to say, this ignorance or forgetfulness has been stereotyped, and as it were enshrined, in doctrines which profess to be scientific. In this matter the Formula-- of Political Economists have been even more feeble than in the definitions of Wealth and of its Sources. Ricardo's famous definition of Rent is a perfect example of that delight which men are apt to have in formal propositions spun out of their own brains, which have little or no correspondence with the facts of Nature. Abstract ideas are the high prerogative of Man, and he could not get on for a single day without them. All Language is built upon them, and the rudest Savage who can convey intelligence to his fellow is exercising the same power which may one day lead on his descendants to the peaks of science. Men practised Logic before the days of Aristotle, and the Inductive Philosophy before the days of Bacon. Political Economists are quite right to reduce within the terms of some abstract definition, if they can, those facts of human history and the nature of human transactions, which are the sources of Rent. But there are bad abstractions as well as good,—abstractions which do not take in more than a fraction of the facts, and that fraction perhaps the least significant of all. They may be true in a sense, and yet be valueless. That is to say, they may reproduce and represent with vividness some mere circumstance connected with particular results, and yet miss completely the essential conditions on which these results depend.

Ricardo's definition of Rent, as pruned and shaped under the fire of criticism by later writers, is not only true, but it is a truism. The Rent which any given piece of land will fetch is precisely the excess of its value over another piece of Land which is too poor to fetch any rent at all-' But we may well ask, like Eliphaz, the Temanite, when we hear such a definition as this, "Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the East wind?" This definition is true, not only of the rent of land, but of the rent of all other things which fetch a price for hire. The admirers of it sometimes boast. that the mere statement of it has all the force of a self-evident proposition.' This, however, becomes very doubtful praise when we observe that the same self-evident character follows the definition when it is applied to the hire of a Costermonger's Donkey as much as when ibis applied to the hire of a Farm. The value for hire of any particular Donkey is obviously the value of its labour above that of any other Donkey which will fetch no price at all for hire, but which works just enough to pay for its own feeding. So in like manner the Rent of any given House is the excess of its value for hire above that of some other House which would fetch no rent at all, but which is used by Paupers as a Hovel. In this form the proposition is true, but it is also barren. All the corollaries which have been drawn from it in later speculations, are not logical consequences at all, but are built up on verbal fallacies imported into the definition by the careless use of ambiguous words. It certainly does not prove, or tend to prove, that the Rent of agricultural land is no element in the cost of Production,' because whatever may be the truth in this matter, the Formula gives us no analysis of Rent, and tells us nothing of its sources or of its composition. It is not very easy to see how the hire of a Steam-Plough would be part of the cost of Production, whilst the hire of a drain or of a fence would not. Yet the hire of such improvements is a large element in Rent. Still less does the Formula prove that all the growing values in all the Products of Labour, tend to become absorbed in the Rent of land—a proposition in itself absurd, and opposed to all observation and experience. The proportion of gross or total produce which goes to Rent is not greater, but, on the contrary, it is smaller, as Agriculture becomes more scientific. Nothing like one-third—the old Scotch proportion in rude ages—of the gross produce, now goes to Rent. One-sixth or one-eighth is more near the average proportion. More than before goes to Muscular Labour; more goes to the breeder of Horses; more goes to the maker of machines; more goes to the seller of manures, and, in average times, more to the Farmer. The increase of Rent arises entirely from the enormous increase of total produce, and from a corresponding increase of demand. This is the reason why high rents are a sign of general prosperity.' If the sixth or the eighth of the total produce be only ten shillings, then the total produce per acre must be as low as £3 per acre or £4. This indicates wretched crops, or a poor market, or both. If, on the other hand, the rent of land be sixty or eighty shillings an acre, it proves that the total produce must be at least £18 an acre or £24 —indicating abundant crops, and a good market. Both of these are the signs of general activity and increasing wealth among all classes. "A low rent," says a well-informed writer, "is always an index of the poverty of the land, a thriftless and unscientific method of culture, or a want of enterprise on the part of both Landlord and Tenant."' The inference that all values are absorbed in Rent is absurd. But whether true or false, such inferences as these have no foundation whatever in the Ricardo Formula, in so far as that Formula expresses a self- evident proposition. It has this self-evident character only when it is kept strictly to a purely quantitative relation. It defines Rent only as regards its amount or quantity, and in no other relation whatever. The moment it pretends to explain Rent in any other of its many relations to the Past, or to the Present, the Ricardo Formula passes beyond its province. It is a definition dealing with quantity alone—and dealing with that element in Rent in a form so elementary that its boasted self-evidence may freely be conceded. It measures even quantity by a standard of comparison which is of no practical use whatever. It assumes a Zero line—the existence of land which will afford no Rent at all, or only a Rent which is nominal. It then announces the profound con- elusion that all higher Rents are to be measured in respect to quantity by their elevation above this Zero line. This is a theoretical but a self-evident truth, even if we dispute as a fact (as well we may) that there is any land except naked rock, which will yield no Rent whatever.' But this self-evident truth is as naked as the only land which answers to its description. It tells us nothing of any practical or even of any speculative value.

By a curious coincidence I first heard this Ricardo Formula for defining Rent, set forth, many years ago, by Lord Macaulay—the only illustrious descendant and representative of the Clan on whose reclaimed lands 1 had been born and bred. He had evidently very little practical knowledge of the many economic elements which determine Rent, nor probably had he ever thought of tracing the Historical elements which explain its origin in the Past. On the other hand, at that time I had not myself studied the subject theoretically; whilst, practically, I had a good deal of instructive and significant experience. I recollect noticing the evident intellectual pleasure with which he expounded a Doctrine which can be so neatly expressed, and which assumes to set forth in so small a compass one of the most complicated of all the facts of History and of Life. Not less distinctly do I remember the sense of emptiness—the painful contrast, as it struck me, between the self-evidence of the Definition, and the sterility of it—not only as regarded any practical application, but even as regarded any satisfying theoretical analysis.

This is but one example out of many of those methods of handling which have brought Political Economy into its present disrepute, as not only a "Dismal Science" but as a Body of Doctrine either actually deceptive or at least to a very large extent misleading. No doubt part of this eclipse in popular estimation, arises from nothing but ignorant rebellion against some truths which are as certainly ascertained as any other truths whatever. For this evil the only remedy, other than discussion, will be found in those practical results of evil which must always follow, sooner or later, from kicking against the pricks of Nature. This was the teaching, for example, as we have seen, which led men at last, in Scotland, to recognise the folly of Sumptuary Laws —of Laws forbidding men to sell or buy except through certain Corporate Monopolies,—and of Laws which pretended to regulate the price of anything. But Ignorances and Rebellions of this kind, affecting our obedience to those Supreme Enactments which are enforced by the high pains and penalties of Natural Consequence, are not the only cause of the wide revolt which now assails the teaching that passes under the name of Political Economy. Another cause is to be found in the fact that this teaching has been often most defective, and, not seldom, even thoroughly erroneous. One grand defect in it has been the comparative neglect, and sometimes even the complete elimination, as not belonging to its Province, of those agencies of Mind which are in reality the ultimate sources of all that is done, or enjoyed or suffered, in Societies of Alen. In undertaking to reduce the growth of Nations, and the progress of Mankind, to causes as rigid and mechanical as those which govern the Material World, it has missed the highest offices which it is its duty to discharge. Political Economy, properly treated, ought not to be a Dismal Science. It ought not to present results emptied of all adequate recognition of the work done by Mind, and Heart, and Will. To pretend to explain the origin, or the growth, or the distribution of Wealth—to explain anything, indeed, of the past history or present condition of Man, without full recognition of these great moving Forces, is like pretending to explain the cylinders, and the tubes, and the valves of a Steam Engine without any reference to the properties of Steam, and without any reference to the mechanical Invention by which its pressures are generated, concentrated, and brought to bear on Use. Against this kind of science, falsely so called, continual resistance and revolt is both inevitable and just. On the other hand, when the Science which deals with all these things, comes—if it ever does come—to be properly handled, and when all the facts of our complicated nature are marshalled in their due rank and order, it will be a Science full of all the interest, and of all the poetry, and of all the pure intellectual delight, which must belong to the contemplation and the analysis of Nature in the noblest of all her Provinces.

Nothing, for example, can be more interesting or instructive than to trace in the light of History the sources and the origin of those relations between men which directly or indirectly exist in all regions of the civilised world between Owners and Occupiers of the Soil. We need not fill our bellies with East Wind in artificial definitions of Rent which have nothing to do with either its origin or its nature. There is really no difficulty in arriving at a definition which is not artificial, but natural'—a, simple description of facts,—and one which nevertheless immediately suggests questions leading up to higher and higher aspects of the truth. Rent is that which one man pays for the temporary possession, or exclusive use, of anything that is not his own, but is the permanent property of another. Rent is the price of Hire. As regards this essential and definite characteristic, it matters nothing what the thing thus hired may be. In common parlance Rent is usually applied to the Hire of land, or of Houses, or of Mines, or of Fishings, but is not usually applied to the Hire of Horses, or of Carriages, or of other moveable property. Each of these different things has its own peculiar kind of use, and each special use holds out to us some special inducement to hire it. But no peculiarity in the nature of the use constitutes any distinction in the principle of Hire. That principle is the same in all cases in which we pay for the temporary possession of anything that belongs to another. What we pay for, when we hire anything, is the Exclusive Use or Possession of it, for a time. And the price we pay for this Exclusive Use is paid to the man who himself possesses it, and has the power of lending it. What we owe to him in the form of Hire, or Rent, is due to him because of his exercising in our favour his right and power of lending. If we want to have the Exclusive Use of a Horse, or of a Cow, or of a Cabbage Garden, or of a Vineyard, or of a Farm, we must hire this exclusive right for a time, if we cannot buy it out and out.

If we go further and ask how the Owner came to have that right of Exclusive Use which many other men can only afford to Hire, we shall find that there is no difference in principle between the different things over which this right has been acquired. It is true that the land of the Cabbage Garden, or of the Vineyard, or of the Farm has not been the creation of Muscular Labour. But neither have Cattle, nor Sheep, nor Horses been the work of Muscle. The breeding of them is the work of Nature, under the direction to some extent of a selecting Mind, and even this only rendered possible by the right of Exclusive Use over at least some grazing land. And so, although land is not in itself the produce either of Muscular or of Mental Labour, yet the Exclusive Use of any part of it has always been originally acquired by the work of Mind. To seek the origin of this exclusive Right of Use we must go back to the Conquering Tribes from which we are all descended. And then, again, to explain how they came to conquer, we must always go back to some time, whether within the area of History or beyond it, when the Men of Muscle surrounded some Man of Mind, lifted him perhaps on their shields and shouted, "Be thou our acknowledged Strongest."' In our own country this tracking of the ultimate sources of Ownership leads us along no doubtful path—no mere faint indications interpreted by theory and speculation. The footprints are revealed to us in no dim light of mere tradition, but in the full blaze of History. We see men crowding under the banner of powerful Chiefs, and seeking "rooms" of land under their protection, because of the security it held out to them for Exclusive Use. We see our early Kings, with the consent of Barons, Clergy, and People, acknowledging the power of those Chiefs as a Power which had been established long before, and tendering to those who held it a new Form of Record as a reward for new, but immortal, services. Poetry and Sentiment could hardly have a better subject. The Recording Instruments may have been long lost—they may be now reduced to pulp in damp cellars, or in neglected Charter-Chests —or they may have been happily preserved with their old Parchments, and their old stately Seals. But whether surviving in this form or not, they live in the continuous transactions of perhaps a thousand years. That which men have been holding—that which they have been buying and selling during all these centuries—has been the Tenure which these Instruments record. Over the whole of Scotland every morsel of land which is owned or hired for the exclusive use of any man, is held by him in virtue of the Rights of Predecessors in Title dating from before the times of Malcolm Canmore, or from the years of contest that were closed at Bannockburn.

The aptitudes of Mind are infinite—or at least as various as all the varieties of circumstance in which the Human Species has been placed since it was born into the world. Nothing can be done without it and everything that has been done, has been done by it. In early ages, courage and conduct in War has been the form of mental energy most effective. But this is generally a compound of many qualities. The influence of some men cannot be explained. It is magnetic. In their presence other men become excited with a fire which is not their own. Without such Minds, mere numbers are of no avail —for the units become as incoherent as grains of sand. Such men become the Founders of Nations because of the confidence they inspire—of the ideas they represent—and of the Institutions which they inaugurate. One of the very first works which they accomplish is, the establishment of supreme and exclusive dominion over some portion of the Earth's surface for themselves and for their immediate followers. This right of Exclusive Use is subdivided and partitioned in a thousand ways. But in its essence and in its principle it is everywhere the same. It is, in its very inception, the fruit of Mind, and it affords the only fulcrum on which Mind can exert its higher powers over the Increase of the Earth during the more peaceful ages which follow, and are the rewards of, Conquest.

Examples have not been wanting in our own day, which exhibit the power of one gifted Mind so to discipline the forces of mere Muscle, and the labour of comparatively mindless men, as to lay the foundations of a civilised State. General Gordon was unquestionably one of those men—whose heroic nature represents, as Muscle never can represent, those supreme forms of "Labour" on which all Wealth, and Comfort, and Law depend. And it is remarkable that when he was first ruling as Governor of Khartoum, one of the most immediate and striking effects of his dominion, was a revival of that cultivation of the soil which is inseparable from individual appropriation, or Exclusive Use. Tracts of land which had been desolate for generations, became cultivated again, simply because the Owners were secured under his dominion against the inroads of men who would not respect the rights of Exclusive Use. If General Gordon had been a Native Ruler, or a Native Chief, having extensive Territorial rights over the Soudan, and depending for the maintenance of his power upon native revenues, the private Owners to whom the fruits and rights of Ownership had been thus restored, would have been only too glad to yield to him no inconsiderable share of these fruits, which could not be enjoyed except under the protection he afforded.

There may be other cases in which the individual appropriation of ]and, and the acknowledged right to its Exclusive Use, has arisen from other causes. Indeed, it may be said with truth to be a universal and apparently a necessary fact in every portion of the Globe, and with every branch of the human family. One of the most prominent Socialistic theorists' who now denounce it, is himself one of a small group of men—less than one- quarter of the population of London—who claim Exclusive Use over the whole State of California, embracing about ninety-nine millions of acres, or 156,000 square miles of plain and valley, of mountain and of hill. No part of this vast territory is open to all mankind—except upon the conditions imposed by this small community. But like all other communities in like circumstances—like all the colonies of our own Empire—they not only practise the individual appropriation of land among their own citizens, but they recognise it as the foundation of their prosperity. What they all want is Settlers; and what all Settlers want is land on which they can exercise their industry for their own benefit and the benefit of the world. Some evidence of truth is always afforded by the universal instincts of Mankind. The celebrated test which has been put to very doubtful use in Theology, has nevertheless its own sphere of legitimate application - "Quod semper - quod ubique - quod ab omnibus."' The most experienced travellers in Africa tell us that there is no portion of that vast Continent which is not claimed in Ownership by some Tribe, and the invasion of which by others would not be resented and resisted by those who thus claim its Exclusive Use. If there be any portions of the Earth's surface where individual appropriation might be less absolutely necessary than another, as regards the means of subsistence, it would seem to be in those happy Islands of the Eastern Archipelago where wild and native trees bear the most nutritious fruits, and the vegetable world holds out the most lavish inducements to an idle communal existence. Yet I find in an interesting account of New Guinea by a Highlander who has devoted himself to Missionary Work in the Pacific, the following instructive passage respecting that immense Island:-" Far up the distant mountain sides, in the clear atmosphere of morning, we saw the smoke made in the Bush by cultivators of yams. The Teachers assert that every acre of soil along this part of New Guinea has its Owner."'

There is no Political Eonomist, to whatever School he may belong, however narrow may be his formule, and however narrower still may be his use and his interpretation of them, who does not at least confess with his lips that "Labour" must be held to include every kind and form of Human Energy. Yet very few writers have really digested this truth,—have taken adequate account of it in their reasonings,—or have attempted to follow it to all its consequences. The great difference between the wages of Skilled and of Unskilled Labour is one of the most rudimentary facts of Life which indicate the value of the mental element even in its simplest forms. The simplest of these forms is that in which some special faculty of Perception is united in the same person with the Labour of the Hands. But all the higher forms of Mental Energy are, for the most part, not united in the same person with the Labour of the Hands. It is the value and effect of these higher Energies of Mind which are most habitually forgotten, and in almost all Treatises on questions of human Progress the word Labour gradually slips down—and down—in its use and signification, until practically it means nothing but the Labour of the Hands, with the more or less implicit addition, only of the various degrees of mere technical or manipulative skill. "The producing Classes"-"The produce of Labour," and many other similar phrases, are perpetually used as if Muscle only were concerned in the sources, or in the increase, or in the diffusion, of Wealth. Nothing can be more erroneous, and yet the error has never been sufficiently exposed. The Modern Socialist School are especially forgetful of Mind in all its highest and most operative powers, and are especially jealous of those facts—the most certain perhaps of all facts—which establish the natural, ineradicable, and far-reaching inequalities with which these powers have been bestowed by Nature on individual men. All the writers of this School dislike and avoid the subject, and, when they do deal with it, show how very little they recognise or appreciate the real facts of Nature.

The most signal example I have seen of the measureless difference between these facts and the Socialist appreciation of them, is the example to be found in some words of Mr. Henry George: "I doubt if any good observer will say that the mental differences of men are greater than the physical differences."' Here we have a comparison made between two things which are absolutely incommensurable. It may be quite true that the tallest Giant ever known is scarcely more than four times as tall as the smallest Dwarf. It may be true that the average difference in height between men. does not exceed one-sixth, or one-seventh of the whole stature. It may be true that the scale of difference in muscular strength—in the lifting of weights, for example— is a scale not much wider in its extremes. But most certainly it is not true that even in those lower manifestations of Mind which constitute mere manual dexterity and skill in handicrafts, the differences between men, are like mere bodily differences, either in kind or in degree. A short man may be as good for all manly work as a tall man—or an ugly man as a man of the most perfect form. But in Mechanics, or in Chemistry, or in Art, the corresponding differences of skill make the whole contrast between work which is useless or effective—healing or poisonous—hideous or of surpassing beauty. To Be, or Not To Be this, and no less, is the question which may depend, and often does depend, upon the degrees of Faculty with which the eyes are directed, or the hands are moved. Still more futile is this comparison of physical distinctions as any illustration of the differences which separate one man from another in the higher faculties of the Mind. The difference between a dull man and a man of genius—whatever the particular line of that genius may be—is a difference so immense as to be immeasurable. The scale is one which reaches from Zero to a practical Infinity. Moreover, it is a scale of difference applicable above all to those kinds of Work on which Society is founded, and by which its progress is determined. There is no scale that can measure the difference, in actual working value, between the Mind of James Watt and the Mind of the most skilled Workmen whom he employed to make, first, his Models, and then, his Engines. But great as this difference is, it is perhaps exceeded by the difference between the average faculties of ordinary men, and those rarer gifts which in the early stages of Society are concerned in founding its Organic Structures, and in establishing its Opportunities of Growth. Yet as regards physical powers, there is often little or nothing to distinguish between such men; and certainly no physical difference could even be a symbol, however imperfect, of the differences of level on which they stand.

It is one of the regrets of my life that I once had a long interview with General Gordon when I did not even know who he was. It was before the time of his greatest fame, but when in a very distant region he had done enough to indicate what manner of man he was. There was, however, nothing in his outward appearance to arrest attention. There was no aspect of command. There was no look of genius in his almost cold, grey eye. There was no indication in his calm manner, of the Fires of God that were slumbering underneath—of the powerful yet gentle nature which was equally at home in the "confused noise" of Battle, in the teaching of poor children, or in the comforting of a deathbed. Yet General Gordon was one who even then had saved an Empire, and had rescued, by his own individual example and force of character, a whole population from massacre and devastation. Not, perhaps, very tractable in council—sometimes almost incoherent in speculative opinion—he was, beyond all question, a born Ruler and King of men —one who in early ages might have been the founder of a Nation—the Chosen Leader of some Chosen People on the way from intertribal wars and barbarism to peace, and Government, and Law. To say of such men as Gordon that the difference between them and the common herd, is no greater than the difference between men of the biggest and the smallest size of body that may be picked off the street, is to betray a profound ignorance of the causes and the forces which have governed the history of Mankind. Nor does it need such an ex- treme case to illustrate the fallacy. The varieties of Mind are infinite, and the pre-eminence of one over another in some special faculty—some single gift—may, and often does, make the whole difference between victory and defeat-between triumphant success and total failure, in the race of individual life, and in the struggle between Tribes and Nations.

The protection of the Powerful has been in all ages the earliest shelter for the beginnings of industry and of wealth. In our own country we have traced these beginnings from before the dawn of History—when Power was establishing itself through all the various gifts and aptitudes which made some men Kings, and Chiefs, and Leaders, by clustering round them all who could not otherwise defend themselves. The Exclusive Use of land, whether by small groups or by individual men, has always been absolutely necessary for the production and enjoyment of even the simplest of its fruits; and this Exclusive Use could not be had without coming under the protection of those who had become Owners, who could defend their Ownership, and who could defend also those to whom they let it, or lent it, for a time. Rent, originally and historically, was the price men were too glad to pay for this protection. This element in Rent is still expressed in every Lease by words which in one form or another have been continuously used for 700 years, and which embodied in language understandings which were necessary and universal. They are words which convey the promise that Tenants will be protected in their Exclusive Use "at all hands, and against all mortals." Sometimes the words were shorter—" against all deadly." This was the Occupier's Tenure. This was his Security. This was the one fundamental advantage for which men owed, and gladly paid, some portion of Produce, or of their own Muscular Labour, or of both.

But from very early times another element was added to the benefits for which Produce and Services were paid. Owners lent not only the Exclusive Use of land, but also the cattle by which the land was stocked. We have seen that this form of what on the Continent is called "Metayer," was common over the whole of Scotland under the name of "Steelbow."' Next came a further change—another addition, or rather another great group of additions, to the benefits for which Rent was paid. These additions included, in the first place, all those exercises of Mind and of Authority by which ignorant and wasteful Usages were abolished, and all those by which the new methods of husbandry were taught and first estab- lished. They included, in the second place, all that we now know under the head of Reclamation and Permanent Improvements,—operations which have in all cases far exceeded the capital value of the Land before they began. The Burst of Industry which I have described as having begun to transform the face of Scotland during the latter half of the last century, did not end with a Burst, but has been continuous and increasing ever since. On this point I can speak from personal experience. Some parts of the "Old Coast Line" on which I have described the operations of Lord Frederick Campbell, were still left unreclaimed when I began the work of Ownership forty years ago. I found that the cost of bringing them into the condition of arable land was not less than, and sometimes exceeded, £25 an acre. As in its unreclaimed state the land was not worth 5s. an acre of the coarsest pasture, this outlay represents one hundred years' purchase of its original value. Sentiment,—of one kind,—has often led me to desire to see, even if it were only for a moment, the aspect of our country when, before the days even of the Picts and Scots, it was covered by magnificent and continuous Forests—where not a stick has grown within the memory of Man, or within the records of authentic History. But as this revival cannot be, Sentiment—of another kind—has led me lately to dig up the trunks of the Caledonian Forest, and to cover with corn-fields some areas which have been for many centuries under bog. One of these seems to have been a glade shaded by giant Oaks. Here again my experience has been that the outlay is far beyond—sometimes forty and fifty times beyond—the capital value of the land as it stood when I began. But reclamations effected thus suddenly, and by one single operation, are few in comparison with those other reclamations which have been gradual and continuous during many generations - each successive work bringing up the condition of the land to the standard of knowledge existing at the time. I have found that in the West of Scotland, where there is a very heavy rainfall, and where great areas of country are far from Tileworks, the mere re-drainage of old cultivated land cannot be thoroughly done, at the present or recent prices of Muscular Labour and of Material, at a less cost than from £10 to £12 per acre; and this alone is very frequently more than twenty years' purchase of the former rent.

But there is another kind of outlay connected with modern husbandry which has been on an enormous scale, the work of Ownership in Scotland, especially during the last forty years. Up to about that time, over the greater part of the country, it had been one of the customary stipulations in Leases that the Tenants should erect new Houses, with such assistance as in each case might be agreed upon. This stipulation was connected with the abandonment of Township Hovels, and of Runrig Tillage. The new class of Houses, although an immense advance on the old huts of Wattles and turf, were generally built of stone without lime and with roofs of thatch. Comfortable and commodious as these Houses often were when compared with the squalid dwellings which had preceded them, they still left much to be desired when compared with the advancing tastes and knowledge of the day. Accordingly, in almost all cases, Tenants taking farms during later years, have offered their new rents upon condition of getting the farms furnished with new Houses, both for themselves and for their Cows and other stock. On this branch of the Work of Ownership, I can also speak from a somewhat large and long experience. It is quite impossible to graduate the outlay on Houses according to the scale of Rent. Certain requirements apply equally to a Farm of £100 a year, and to a farm of £500 a year. I have rarely succeeded in building a "Steading" or complete set of Farm Buildings, under at least five years' outlay of the improved rent. Nine and ten years' outlay is common; and in the case of small Farms of between £100 and £200, the outlay has been as high as sixteen years of the rent. The general result is that the capital represented by Ownership in Scotland is seldom less than from forty to fifty years' rental, and is very often a great deal more. The average capital of Tenants is certainly less than five years of the rental per acre. I have elsewhere' specified the case of one farm in which the capital of the Owner represents the sum of £7046, whilst that invested by the Tenant would represent, on a liberal computation, not more than £966. The results of any improvement which such a Tenant can make upon his farm must be always in greatest measure due to sources which he did not contribute. He is trading on the capital, on the previous improvements, and on the ancient Ownership, of other men. Yet there are politicians and economists who recommend that a Tenant who builds a new piggery or a new silo, at the cost of some fraction of a year's rent, should be allowed to deprive Owners of the rights which flow from centuries of Tenure and of outlay, by selling the occupancy which has been lent to them for a time upon stipulated conditions.

These facts, and a host of others correlative to these, open up an immense subject. If writers on Political Economy and on Social problems of any kind, would not only say, but would practically remember that Labour means every form and kind and degree of Human Energy, and most especially all those kinds which were the earliest and are the highest, their "Science" would not be the dismal, lean and erroneous teaching which too often it has been found out to be. Abstractions from which everything has been subtracted that ought to have been included—arbitrary selections and as arbitrary rejections among the elements contributing to great results—slovenly analysis, and complete forgetfulness of essential things which are by way of being left to be understood,—all these sources of error leave but a poor and beggarly account of the inexhaustible riches and Poetry of Nature, in the true history and progress of Man. The multitude of mental agencies, and of powers—the complexit of the sources, and of the opportunities of war —dating back through many centuries, with which, and upon which, every man trades in Scotland who hires any land belonging to another—but none of which are due to the hirer—are but the type of a general truth, affecting more or less all callings or employments. When Men are taught that they ought to have the "whole value of their own Labour," they are never taught to count and estimate all the factors which go to make up the total value of results to which, perhaps, their own contribution may be the smallest. They do not think of the Capital which is the savings of Mind, of the Organisation which is the invention of Mind—of the Enterprise and Confidence which are the expectations of Mind—of the Law which is the embodiment of Mind,—on all of which the whole of their own opportunities have absolutely depended. And yet these considerations are not founded on theory or speculation. They are founded on indisputable facts, and are brought to light as facts by the very simple process of analysing with care and accuracy the conditions of our own life, and the meaning of the commonest words in which we instinctively express them.

The great interest and value of the history of Scotland regarding all these matters, lie in its splendid continuity. Like the days of the Poet, our generations have been "bound each to each by natural piety."' From the days when her early Sovereigns, in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, gathered round them the Barons and Knights and the Burgesses of the Kingdom, and gave them new Instruments recording and defining the rights and powers which they had even then immemorially enjoyed—from the time when Robert the Bruce emerged triumphant from the War of Independence, and transferred these rights and powers from men who had been faithless, to men who had been faithful to their Country—from the time when he rewarded by a fresh and noble Tenure those who had stood by his side from Methven Bridge to Bannockburn,—the history of Scotland has been one long and steady development of the Reign of Mind in Government and in Law. The amalgamation of Races—the blending of interests—the fusion of Classes—the freedom of trade—the local movements of population in the rise of new industries,—these have been the lines of its long rough but steady march from extreme poverty and rudeness, to great wealth, and great achievements in every walk of intellectual exertion.

There are drawbacks and limitations to progress in all Nations, and it would be alike foolish and dangerous to forget them. But it is certainly not true that the immense increase of Wealth in Scotland since the Union has been an increase not widely distributed over the bulk of her population. The wages of her artificers, by no means the highest in skill, who are now employed on the Industries of the Clyde, amount very often in a single month to more money, with ten times the purchasing power, than the whole yearly income enjoyed by their fathers a hundred years ago. The same contrast is presented in every walk of life. The Houses and Cottages which all Owners have been building for Tenants during the last fifty years, are palaces compared—not only with the huts of the corresponding classes in the Military Ages, but compared even with the Houses lived in by powerful Chiefs not longer than a century and a half ago. The multiplication of Villas and Houses of a high class along all our shores, and round the old centres of our great cities, represents an immense aggregate of comfortable means among all the classes engaged in Trade and Commerce. The condition of our great cities is justly attracting attention, and much remains to be done for them in lines of action which cannot be too earnestly considered. But the more carefully we look into the Past, the more we shall be thankful for the general direction of the path in which, as a Nation, we have been led.

No man was more deeply versed in the literature of the Past—in the details of life during the Military Ages—than the late Mr. Cosino Innes. He did not escape altogether from that curious form of Sentiment which tempts us all at times to long for a Wild Life, and to wish that our wild land had remained for ever unreclaimed—that our mountains had remained for ever waste. Under the influence of this strange glamour, which, as we have seen, never has any power as regards the Lowlands, he has allowed himself in one passage to take strange liberties with History and with Logic. He suggests that all the wild surfaces of our Country were not really intended to be conveyed by Charter, because in those days they were not really thought of Yet in another passage of the same Essay, when dealing with the express words of these Charters, which carefully and exhaustively enumerated every variety of surface within the boundaries of an Estate, he explains that these enumerations were introduced ob majorem cautelam—or, in other words, from the very excess of thoughtfulness. Of course this—the only irrational passage in all the writings of a very learned man—is the only one ever quoted by the irrational and the sentimental. Yet I know few writings more rich in evidence of all the leading facts and inferences which have been set forth in the preceding chapters----those especially which show us at once the connection and the contrast between the past and the present condition of our country. The original identity of Celtic Institutions with those of the other Northern Nations—differing only in the longer survival of early customs, and in the want of any code to define or fix;' the gradual adoption of Saxon Laws, not as alien or as the result of conquest, but because there was nothing definite to be displaced, and because those laws were in their nature "the most approved—the most civil;" the extent of exactions imposed upon the people during the Military Ages; the fractionally small portion of the country which was cultivated at all, this portion being confined to a narrow strip on the river bank, or beside the sea; the miserable use to which even those small areas were put that were grazed at all—just serving to keep the cattle from starvation; the constant quarrels arising out of the common use of pastures; the great excess of population which arose in the Glens over the number which the country could support with its own produce "or honestly;" the enormous waste involved in the neglect and utter vacancy of vast areas of mountain land—stretching, on one Estate, across the whole of Scotland from sea to sea, and yielding literally nothing to represent "the thousands and millions of sheep which graze them now;" the beginnings of improvement in the obligatory stipulations imposed on Tenants by Owners in the terms of Leases, so early as 1511 the enforcement of all such stipulations by the penalty of removal or dismissal from the Estate; the safety of the evidence that the small cultivators and subtenants, now called Crofters, were then Tenants at Will; —all these, and many other kindred facts, testify, first, to the rude and barbarous condition of our ancestors, and, next, to the powers and processes by which their children have been raised to an acknowledged place among the most civilised nations in the world. The contrast is indeed astonishing. "Always on the verge of famine and every few years suffering the horrors of actual starvation"—such are the words in which this careful Historian describes the old condition of the Highlands. There is no wonder that he is roused to something like enthusiasm when in the case of a particular Estate,—that of the Campbells of Cawdor in Nairn,—he sees and describes all the poetry of a most blessed change:-" The woods now wave over the grey Castle with a luxuriance of shade which its old inhabitants never thought of. Above all, the country round, of old occupied by a half-starving people, lodged in houses of 'faile,' 1 disturbed by plundering neighbours, and ever and anon by the curse of Civil War, is now cultivated by an active and thriving Tenantry, with the comforts which increasing intelligence and wealth require and supply."' This is a beautiful vignette. But, again, this is only a little bit out of a 'wide landscape, which carries into the mind, through the eye, certain .convictions in which we cannot be deceived.

And so it happens again that Mr. Cosmo Innes when, in another Work, he finds himself in contact with the actual records of old times, and with the picture they present of life and manners, was, as we all must be, recalled to the realities of historic truth. In closing his Preface to that instructive record of life on a great Highland Estate during three Centuries, which is contained in the Book of Taymouth, he expresses his general conclusion in these remarkable words:-" While there is enough of romance in the glimpses here opened of the rough life of the 'good old time,' it is pleasant to think that while much is changed, every change has been for the better. The country which these papers show us in so wild a state of lawless insecurity has for the last two centuries steadily improved, and the process has not been more marked in the face of the country than in the moral and physical condition of the people and their social happiness." Yet this is spoken of a district in the Highlands from which there was as large a movement of population, in connection with the Industrial Age, as from any other portion of the country.

Among the many delusions which a false sentiment has promoted there has, perhaps, never been a delusion more complete than that which imagines that in early Celtic Customs or traditions, as distinguished from the corresponding Customs and traditions of the Teutonic Nations, there was any element which, if it had been left alone, would have built up some Polity better for the mass of the people than the Polity which actually arose, out of the amalgamation of the races, in England and in Scotland. As it so happens, we have historical evidence on this subject, more ancient, more continuous, and more conclusive, than on any other subject whatever connected with the rise of civilisation in any part of Europe. In an earlier chapter I have already referred to the curiously narrow and local, but attractive culture of the early Celtic Church. It is beyond question that the Monks and Priests of that Church had some culture and some letters in a literature purely Celtic, at a time when the other modern European nations were either sunk in utter barbarism, or at least were so little advanced as to have nothing of the same kind. But from this very fact we have an amount of evidence in respect to the condition and habits of these Celts, which we do not possess in respect to any other European race whatever at the same date. In the Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters we have a continuous Chronicle which is supposed, on good grounds, to be substantially authentic from the Second Century of the Christian Era. Even if this very early date be doubted, there seems to be no doubt whatever that these Annals are authentic from at least the Fourth Century, and they are continuous down to the middle of the Seventeenth. They present to us all the chief incidents of each year which were considered worthy of record by men of the most educated and intelligent class in Ireland. The result is to show that not only were the whole conditions of Society barbarous in the sense of being rude, rough, and violent but that they were barbarous in the sense of being exceptionally savage, and without a trace of amelioration or of progress towards better things.

There may be a high interest attaching to Warlike Tribes—if their Wars have in them even the germ of contests animated by nobler passions than the mere thirst for blood, or the mere triumphs of revenge. But we may turn over page after page of these Annals without seeing even one solitary symptom of the crystallising forces which begin the Organic Structures of Civilisation. Every page is a sickening repetition of intertribal battles, murders, and devastations. Taking only the period before the English Conquest by Henry Plantagenet, we have the record of about 700 years. Not one single step can be traced through all those centuries in the path of progress. On the contrary, the country was getting worse and worse. And yet there as Poetry and Sentiment—of a kind. One of the most curious features of the Monkish Journals is the constant bursting of the narrative into verse— couplets and quatrains of rhythmic utterance. Few of us can judge of any beauty which may belong to them in the Erse. But we can all judge of the meanings and passions which inspired them. There are some allusions to Nature—to the Sea—to Rivers—to Mountains—which are poetic. But the animating spirit is almost purely ferocious—with nothing of the higher sentiments which we understand as Patriotism. No deeds of massacre, however dreadful, are ever narrated with rebuke—still less any acts of mere plunder—unless, perchance, any of these should have been directed against Ecclesiastics. Then indeed the culprit "King" or Chief is denounced as a monster, and some rival King or Chief is incited—in piteous or in furious appeals—to punish him with death and with the devastation of his country. Thus in the year 733 we are told in the Annals that a Celtic King had ventured to practise upon some Church or Convent one of those exactions, "Coigny," which were universally practised against all the laity. He had forcibly taken some "refection" from a Church called "Cill-Cunna." For this offence another King was incited by "Congus, successor of Patrick," to take bloody vengeance on his too hungry rival. As usual there was a great battle. On the way to it the avenging King bursts into this characteristic poetical effusion:-

"For Cill-Cunna, the Church of my Confessor,
I take this journey on the road;
Aedh IRoin shall leave his head with me,
or I shall leave mine with him."

And then we have the result chronicled thus:-

"The slaughter of the Ulidians with Aedh Roin by
Aedh Allan, King of Ireland,
For their Coigny at Cill-Cunna he placed soles to necks."

This last image may be very beautiful and poetic in Erse, but in Anglo-Saxon it requires explanation. Accordingly the meaning is given in a note by the learned Editor, as follows:-"This is an idiom expressing indiscriminate carnage, in which the sole of the foot of one body was placed over against or across the neck or headless trunk of another."

It would be easy to fill whole chapters with extracts of the same kind. Many of them would exhibit the misery of the people. One of them celebrates a battle of which it is specially recorded "Great the carnage of Fir Feini," which is explained to be the "Farmers"' or Cultivating Class. Down to the very latest date in these Annals the same spirit is exhibited. The glory of a great Irish Chief who died in Rome so late as 1616, is celebrated in the last pages of the last volume. He is praised as "a warlike, valorous, predatory, enterprising Lord." The truth is, that the Celtic race, like many others, were first lifted above themselves by contact and mixture with other blood. By themselves they had not only failed to advance, but they had fallen back. They had declined from the doctrines and the practice even of their own Brehon Laws. The Colony which they sent out to Scotland in the Sixth Century, rose, and has risen, in exact proportion as it became thoroughly mixed and fused with the Teutonic people. England gained immensely by both the Conquests which were effected over her. Scotland gained quite as much by the more peaceful but equally effective processes through which Saxon and Norman blood established itself even in the remotest Highlands. Ireland has suffered not from the Conquest, but because the higher Rule and Law were so long limited to the Pale. No corner of Europe needed so much that work of complete amalgamation which has given all its strength and power to the British people.

There is, however, one fruitful branch of the national life of Scotland to which I cannot now direct any adequate attention, but to which I must shortly refer in closing. This fruitful branch is that which consists in the life and labours of men of the Celtic race, who have moved out from their native hills and glens, and have given the benefit of high culture, or of a rich and imaginative character, to their country and to the world. Two examples of this kind are impressed upon my memory by circumstances which have left an indelible impression. Many years ago I was speaking to Lord Macaulay on the subject of the Indian Code of Criminal Law, to which, in his own earlier life, he had devoted his learning and his genius. He had occasion to mention the difficulties of the work—the deep questions of Jurisprudence which it involved, and the sources from which he had sought and found assistance. Amongst these he mentioned especially the name of a man of whom at that time I had never heard—one of those who work unseen in our Civil Services, and to whom the Nation very often is indebted for far more than it ever comes to know. This was Sir John M'Leod, a native of Skye, and one of the smaller Proprietors in that Island. Lord Macaulay was not a man to lavish praise indiscriminately. His mind was critical, and lie had of necessity in his own nature a very high standard in judging of intellectual powers. It was therefore with some surprise that I heard Lord Macaulay speak in almost enthusiastic praise of this little- known descendant of the old MacLeods of Skye, as having one of the most profound, sagacious, and philosophic minds he had ever met with.' When I came to know Sir John M'Leod as I afterwards did, I found in him the perfect type of a highly cultured son of the Celtic race—modest, refined, dignified,—and speaking English, after some forty years' service abroad, with as strong a Gaelic tone and accent as if he had never left his Estate in Skye.

But I recall another example somewhat different in kind. A curious habit of the Highland people serves to conceal sometimes the part they have played in the highest walks of human enterprise. This is the habit of changing their name—dropping one and assuming another. During the Military Ages they did so perpetually, as we have seen, when they enlisted under some new Chief, and joined some other Clan. In assuming the name of their new associates they kept up that theory and flavour of blood-relationship which in nine cases out of ten had no other foundation whatever. Sir Walter Scott tells us that one of his friends, shooting in the North, had a native guide assigned to him under the name of Gordon. But he recognised the man as having served him in a similar capacity some years before in another place under the name of MacPherson. On asking the man whether he was not the same, and whether his name had not then been MacPherson, the composed reply was, "Yes, but that was when I lived on the other side of the hill." It is less known, however, that this habit has always been very general when Highlanders leave the hills and settle in the Low Country. The native Celtic name is dropped, and some Lowland form is adopted which is supposed to be a translation or an equivalent. It was thus that during the scarcities and distress which afflicted the Hebrides during the last years of the last century - about 1792 - a family of the name of MacLeay migrated from the Islet of Ulva, one of the broken fragments of the volcanic Island of Mull, and settled at Blantyre, near Glasgow. The name they took was Livingstone, and their illustrious grandchild was the great African Traveller and Missionary. The purity of the true old Celtic race cannot be safely determined by name or language. Long centuries of foreign dominion, and of intercourse and inter-marriage, leave it very doubtful where we can find, even in the Hebrides, anything like an unmixed descent. But having had the honour of a somewhat intimate friendship with David Livingstone, I always regarded him as an example of the purest Celtic type. Rather below the medium stature, broad, sturdy, and with an evident capacity for great endurance, the special feature which attracted notice was his very dark hazel eye—an eye so dark as almost to suggest a Southern or an Eastern origin. Great self-possession and dignity of manner were blended with a curious mixture of gentleness and determination. Nothing in Nature escaped his observation; and shortly before his death I had a letter from him, written in Central Africa, alluding to a peculiarity of growth in a tree at Inveraray which I had not before noticed, but which he must have noticed in silence when we were together. He was another instance of a man like General Gordon, with a special gift and a special inspiration, which in all human probability would never have been developed if he had been born in the life passed by the old Sub-tenants in TJlva. Burning a little Kelp, digging a few Potatoes, or even herding Cattle in the summer Shealings which looked down on

"all the group of Islets gay
That guard famed Staffa round,"

is a life which it is difficult to rank at its proper level as compared with that which he actually led —a life in which he became to millions of the human race the first Pioneer of Civilisation, and the first Harbinger of the Gospel.

The blood and the race which in our own day have produced two such men - one from the class of Chiefs, and another from the class of ordinary Clansmen,—must have the very best stuff of human nature in it. But that blood and race is not confined to those who still retain the Gaelic speech. The larger and the more cultivated part of it is spread over the wide Dominions of the British Crown. It is one of the many, sources of our Imperial strength and wealth. The Low Country of Scotland is full of it. The Colonies are full of it. The Indian Services have always been full of it. The Army and the Navy have had abundant reason to be proud of it. It was trusted by The Bruce in the thickest of the Fights he fought. But its whole pride, and aim, and object must continue to be those which that great King promoted—the object of living and working in harmony with the other elements which have built up the Scottish Nation, and in obedience to those Natural and Moral Laws which are the only solid foundation of all Human Institutions.

The progress that Scotland made after union with England, was a progress without a parallel in any of the older Nations of the World. Yet that progress was not due to anything she derived from England in the way of Laws and Institutions. These were all her own. She kept them at the Union, and guarded them, with a noble, because a grateful, care. We were jealous about them, not from any narrow or provincial feeling,—but because our fathers had told us of the noble works done in their days, and in the old times before them. The one great benefit which Scotland did owe to the last and happiest of her many unions, was nothing more than access to larger fields of exercise to wider openings of Opportunity. She rose to the immense prospects of this new horizon because of the Mind and Character which had been developed under the long discipline, and through the fiery trials, of her own stormy history. The wonderful start she made in the race of intellectual and industrial Life, was due to that history—to the older unions effected during it—to the doctrines it had embodied--to the energies it had developed—to the great principles of Jurisprudence which had worked under the sanctions, and with the authority, of Law. Scotland, therefore, at the Union, did not break with her own Past. On the contrary, she kept it, and cherished it, as the richest contribution she could make to the growth of One Great Empire, and to the Polity of One United Kingdom. Let her keep it still—and always in the same spirit, and with the same great end in view.