76 ' BARRA. ECONOMY. 



the expense of cultivation so as to leave any profit to the 

 occupier. Here, the great and increasing competition for 

 land necessarily generates a rent which the habits of the 

 farmer and the small quantity of food and accommodation 

 he requires enable him to pay. Such rents are in many 

 instances called oppressive. In this view it may truly be 

 said that any rent is oppressive ; but even the abandonment 

 of a- rent, which in the case of the small tenants rarely 

 exceeds 3 per annum, would not remove the evils 

 under which this country labours. The fault lies deeper, 

 and is compounded of the excess in the quantity, and 

 the defects in the distribution of the Highland po- 

 pulation. 



It is this also which constitutes the chief obstacle to 

 the proper improvement of the land. It cannot be said 

 that there is a want of industry or a deficiency in the 

 labour bestowed on this object, when we examine the 

 spade cultivation by which the small farms are 

 generally conducted, and which was already noticed in 

 treating of Tirey. There is, in fact, a super-abundance of 

 labour applied to it, which under the proper direction of 

 capital would effect useful and permanent improvements ; 

 it is lost because it is wasted in the pursuit of those which 

 can only be temporary. There is no want of industry, but 

 it is mis-directed. Here again the proprietors suffer under 

 the unjust censure of impeding improvements by with- 

 holding leases. But a lease to him who has no capital 

 is nearly useless, while the only security which the land- 

 lord can retain for the productiveness of the soil, is the 

 power of withdrawing the farm from him who neglects it, 

 and bestowing it on some other of the craving competitors 

 who are surrounding him, and who come with the double 

 claim of equal wants and greater industry. When the 

 system shall change by the enlargement of farms and 

 the introduction of a superior class of tenants, the pro- 

 prietor will naturally dispose of his land with the same 

 regard for his own interest as his Lowland neighbours ; 

 that interest and those of his tenants, as well as of the 



