134 NORTH UIST. PEAT. 



with coal from the western parts of Scotland, would tend 

 much to their improvement ; but it is at present, under the 

 existing division of farms and the consequent want of a 

 constant and regular basis of exchange, impracticable. It 

 is indeed a case parallel to those which must always 

 happen in countries similarly divided, similarly peopled, 

 and where there is no steady demand for labour ; where 

 consequently no occupations exist by which an exchange- 

 able commodity can be generated. If it is true that 

 the price of peat in Tirey is five times that of coal, when 

 the charges of procuring it are considered, it is equally 

 to be remembered that the labour now employed on 

 that object has at present no other adequate vent; and 

 that its value must be estimated, not as it is thus em- 

 ployed, but as it would be employed if it were not 

 directed to that tedious and laborious occupation. The 

 price of peat may thus in certain extreme cases be 

 perhaps nothing. The same argument applies to a 

 proposal which has been made, to establish in the Long 

 Island, where the peat excels both in quality and quantity, 

 a manufacture for the purposes of a general supply, and 

 to reduce it to a distinct occupation. Could such a 

 manufacture be established, it is plain that the consumer 

 must find something to give in exchange, and it is not 

 difficult to see that the inferior price and superior quality 

 of coal, conjoined to the activity of an established com- 

 merce, which is always ready to create a new market 

 wherever there is an opening, would soon drive the peat 

 competitors out of that market. Like most other established 

 systems, that of the Islands, if it be bad, is at least con- 

 sistent ; and, like those, its bearings are so numerous, that 

 he who attempts to repair a part without a regard to the 

 connexions which it has with the whole, will act like 

 a legislator who should attempt to reform New Zea- 

 land by introducing the Statutes at large. It is not 

 that improvements cannot be compulsory : the fault is, 

 that the improver takes too narrow a view of the bearings 



