BENBECULA. HIGHLAND POPULATION. 103 



it they are unable to command a fair proportion of the 

 necessaries of life. No one who is acquainted with this 

 country can doubt the fact itself, as far as relates to the 

 means of living, which are not the less deficient because 

 the deficiency is universal. Riches and poverty to a 

 certain extent may be relative, but there is a point at 

 which poverty is absolute, and where it does not cease 

 to be an evil although divested of those additional griev- 

 ances which are the result of a comparison with superior 

 wealth.* When therefore it is asserted that the population 

 is not now redundant, because it was equally supposed 

 to be redundant thirty years ago, and has yet materially 

 increased within that period, nothing is proved but that 

 the means of living, which are the result of an additional 

 quantity of productive labour and of a cause still more 

 obvious, the introduction of the potatoe, have themselves 

 increased. Although a nice equipoise of the two, similar 

 to that which existed at the commencement of the pro- 

 cess, may not have been preserved at all times, yet under 

 certain slight fluctuations, the population and the produce 

 have held a common pace together. No parallel can 

 in a case of this nature be nicely consistent throughout, 

 and accordingly the demand has in many instances out- 

 stripped the supply, and the excess of population has 

 been felt at various times in the want of farms to culti- 

 vate, of labour to perform, and consequently, of the 

 means of living. At others doubtless, the supply has 

 exceeded the demand, as must sometimes necessarily 

 happen, and thus the contradictory statements of dif- 

 ferent observers, too much generalized but equally founded 

 on facts, are to be reconciled. If the only statements we 



* Though the poverty of the people is here so great, we must beware 

 of attaching to the term the debasing ideas with which it is associated in 

 England. It is not at variance with the numerous moral and physical 

 virtues that strongly characterize the Highlanders. The reader will 

 probably recollect a parallel distinction which Montesquieu has drawn 

 on this subject. 



