Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 4

394 THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.
Forty-five, they had enjoyed, began to make money their chief god, and,
descending from the moral platform of protectors of the people, to tlie
material level of traliickers in land, to look upon the swift increase of
rents as the only test of social well-being ; and with this view whenever
the existence of the people or the soil tended to retard the return of large
immediate pecuniary profit into their pockets, they did not hesitate to
sacrifice the people, and to respect their pockets. Of course, I am not
bringing any charge here against whole classes of men, nor do I by any
means intend to say that the landlords of Great Britain generally are the
wicked class of society, as John Stuart ]\Iill said they were the stupid
class. I am merely stating the strong features of the case that you may
see how the commercial principle, according to undeniable statistical evi-
dence, did act when it became securely enthroned in the breast of certain
of our landed proprietors in the Highlands ; though at the same time I
am not so ignorant of the social history of this country, as to imagine that
the pure selfishness of the commercial spirit could have achieved the
destruction and degradation of our Highland peasantry, which we now
have to lament on so portentous a scale, had it not been assisted by other
influences all converging in a series of rash unreasonable plunges to the
same disastrous result. But favom-ed by these desocialising influences
and unhappy circumstances, a certain number, I fear a majority of our
landed proprietors, did what they did, and contributed more or less to the
agrarian ruin of the people whom it was their duty to protect. And now
let us see a little more in detail what forms this unsocial work of rural
depopulation in the special circumstances of the Scottish Highlands
naturally assumed. The first shape that the commercial inspiration took
was in a demand for
LARGE FARMS
of every kind, but especially sheep farms. What is the advantage of
large farms ? They enable the proprietor to fish his rent at one cast from
the pocket of one big tenant, rather than from the pockets of ten small
tenants ; with this convenience the laird is naturally very much pleased,
and his factor more so ; one big farm house also, with steadings, costs less
than ten little ones ; and further, when you have got rid of the poorer
class of the peasantry by shovelling them into the nearest burgh, driving
them into the Glasgow factories, or shipping them across the seas, you
will have no poor-rates to pay and no poachers to fear. It may be also,
in certain cases, that you increase the productiveness of your land by
diminishing the number of the producers. But this is by no means either
a clear or a general case ; and any person who doubts the superior pro-
ductiveness of small farms in many cases has only to divest himself of the
shallow cant of a certain class of easy factors and ignorant lairds, and cast
a glance into the agricultural statistics of Belgium, France, Tuscany,
Denmark, Germany, and other continental countries. Besides, even sup-
posing the laird and the big farmer could divide a few hundreds more be
tween them, when the big farmer got possession of the whole district,
dispossessing all the original tenants, tlie State wants men, and Society
wants men, and the country demands its fair share of ])opulation as well
as the town ; and granting for the moment that so much greater produc-
tion in the shape of money is the supreme good, it is not the quantity of