124 NORTH UIST. KELP MANUFACTURE. 



ployment is required before larger tracts of land can be 

 effectually improved ; and the diversion of the sea weed 

 to this purpose is but a small part of that which is re- 

 quisite to effect this object. When such alterations shall 

 take place in the state of capital, population, tenures, 

 and the division of lands, as will doubtless arise in the 

 gradual course of improvement, it will be time enough to 

 examine this question ; and the solution will probably not 

 be very difficult. In the mean time, while there is no 

 such demand for it existing, and while the price of labour, 

 however that labour be obtained, is such as to render it 

 an object of profit to the landholder, it is futile to say 

 that the making of kelp is not of advantage to the com- 

 munity. As a manufacture it furnishes employment to 

 a half-employed population, and forms therefore a steady 

 addition to its means. What remains of the argument 

 respecting the relative claims of kelp and agriculture on 

 the sea weed, must necessarily be a mere question of 

 the market price of the former compared with the price 

 of production. 



But another doubt has been started, of a more 

 refined nature and of far less easy solution. It has 

 been asserted that from short sighted views respecting 

 the profits of this manufacture, the proprietors have 

 imagined they had an interest in a crowded population, 

 by means of which the wages of labour were lowered, 

 and a ready supply of it reserved for the purposes of 

 making kelp. The consequences of such a policy, if 

 it exists, would be to lower the rent of land as well 

 as the price of labour, since a superfluous tenantry is 

 here identical with an inadequate rent*. In this way, 



* As this proposition appears to contradict the common axiom 

 respecting the effects of competition, it is proper to explain the cause. 

 There is a point where, in this country, it ceases to have its usual 

 effect and beyond which that effect becomes negative. From extreme 

 subdivision arises bad cultivation, land imperfectly stocked, bad live 

 stock, and consequent general poverty and inability. This result, 



