BARRA. ECONOMY. 75 



surplus produce. In a similar manner a revenue has been 

 derived from tenements which produce no surplus, the rent 

 being here analogous to that which arises in the vicinities 

 of commerce and of manufactures ; a price paid for the 

 accommodation requisite in the fisheries, and a portion of the 

 wages of labour. A superficial view of the limited produce 

 and of the apparently high rent of many Highland farms 

 of this nature, has thus been often made a ground of ill- 

 founded censure on the proprietors ; who perhaps have 

 not been sufficiently careful in rendering the nature of this 

 operation intelligible to their tenantry ; if indeed it be 

 possible to render intelligible to them what their better in- 

 formed neighbours are so often incapable of understanding. 

 It is no small matter in this case, as in that of taxation, to 

 prevent a confusion of the semblance and of the reality. 

 The grievance of a tax exists too often when the real tax is 



O 



levied on an individual very different from the imaginary suf- 

 ferer. An instance of an injudicious attempt at this dis- 

 tinction occurs in one of the islands under review. Here, 

 the proprietor levies a rent on each boat employed by his 

 tenantry in fishing. The consequences are obvious ; grie- 

 vous complaints are made of oppression and of injustice. 

 Yet this is a case not of rigid justice merely, but of 

 mistaken lenity, since he whose indolence or incapacity 

 prevents him from fishing is exempted from that rent 

 which the land alone would not allow him to pay without 

 inconvenience or ruin. The regulation is however in every 

 respect inconsiderate, since it not only creates an ima- 

 ginary evil, but operates as a discouragement to the 

 fisheries, on which the proprietor must in a great measure 

 depend for his rent as the tenant also must for his 

 subsistence. 



A stranger who for the first time sees the miserable 

 cultivation which is carried on by the smallest class of 

 tenantry among rocks and bogs, will be surprised to find 

 that any rent can be paid from the produce of such pos- 

 sessions ; in other situations they would pay none, or rather 

 they would not be cultivated, since they could not repay 



