BENBECULA. HIGHLAND POPULATION. 105 



But the point of distress having once arrived, it is im- 

 possible to wait for the tedious operations by which it 

 is to be remedied, as it ultimately may, since the demand 

 for relief is imperious, and to withhold it when it can 

 be given is cruelty. The redundancy must be removed 

 if possible, by diverting it to those places where there 

 may be a demand for labour ; and to argue against the pro- 

 priety of this measure, admitting it to be practicable, is a 

 proceeding as distant from good policy as from humanity. 

 The criterion by which the excess of population in Ben- 

 becula may be judged of, without having recourse to the 

 insufficient helps of numerical investigation, consists as 

 much in the minute division of farms, as in the low 

 price of labour. The state of the kelp manufacture is 

 a sufficient proof of this latter fact, it being conducted 

 at a much lower price than in the neighbouring districts. 

 The comparative poverty of the inhabitants corresponds, 

 and, as is usual in similar cases, ill-founded complaints 

 prevail, of oppression on the part of the proprietor in 

 the exaction of so large a portion of labour for the occu- 

 pation of tenements so small. We cannot expect juster 

 views of political economy among these wretched inhabit- 

 ants than we find among their betters ; and it is in vain 

 to remind them that even the unconditional surrender 

 of the whole land would in a short time leave them as 

 poor as they now are. Under this pressure their attach- 

 ment to the soil is insuperable ; no consideration appear- 

 ing to have any power to induce the wish for a change 

 of place, though even far short of actual emigration. It 

 is sufficiently difficult to effect such a change of place 

 even in more common circumstances, since " Man" it 

 has been well observed, " is of all lumber the most dif- 

 ficult to move," but the degree of attachment here, and 

 generally throughout the country, is such, that scarcely 

 any considerations are able to overcome it. There is 

 in this case however as in many others, an apparent con- 

 tradiction, since there has been a time when the inhabitants 



