( 18 ) 



nor did he, perhaps, sufficiently consider that even if 

 that manufacture had continued on the same scale, 

 the increase of population, if not somehow checked, 

 would soon overtake its supplies : and that unless his 

 successors enforced strictly the prohibitions against 

 subdivision, the inevitable result would be a vast 

 semi-pauper population. 



These dates are, however, interesting and impor- 

 Erroneous impres- fr^^^^^ c^^ showing how unfounded are the impressions 



sioii as to antiquity , , , , . . „ 



of small crofts. ^^w common among the people as to the antiquity ot 



their occupation of the small crofts which many of 

 them still possess. In Tyree the great majority of 

 these crofts were not more than about forty years old 

 when the crash of the potato famine came in 1846. 

 And so far from the possessions held by the tenants 

 havintj^ lono; belonged to themselves or their *' ances- 

 tors," these possessions were either given to them by 

 the special favour of the proprietor at a very recent 

 period, or were still later acquired by irregular sub- 

 divisions ao^ainst the rules and reo;ulations of the 

 estate. 



All these causes of impoverishment were doubtless 

 After 1806, and aggravated by the death of my grandfather in 1806, 

 Duke° subdivision ^^'^ ^^^^ successiou of George, the sixth Duke of 



allowed to go on Argyll, during whose life of thirty-three years the 

 uncliccked 



. restraining and regulating power of a landlord was 



comparatively in abeyance. Nothing but this power, 

 steadily exercised, could have checked the ruinous ten- 

 dency towards subdivision, or supplied the knowledge 

 and the foresight which are invariably wanting to a 

 population living under such conditions. 



The result was what might have been expected. 

 Mr. Maxwell of Aros lived to see that result in 



