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change of management, is an increase of a similar 

 kind. It did not indeed arise as elsewiiere on mountain 

 land, but on land arable and naturally fertile. But it 

 did arise out of a series of operations which have been 

 equivalent to absolute reclamation from utter waste. 

 It is an increase of value measured not only by the 

 height of a new knowledge, but by the depths of a 

 former io;norance. And this is the OTeat lesson to be 

 learned from corresponding increments of value which 

 have arisen all over the Highlands. The squalid 

 wretchedness of the older modes of living and of 

 husbandry, from the want of capital, and of know- 

 ledge, and of industry, is the great fact to which it 

 testifies. Such " leaps and bounds" in productive 

 value are not possible in any country where the culture 

 of each generation keeps abreast of the general line of 

 progress in its own day. They are only possible where 

 there have been utter stagnation and positive as* well 

 as relative decline. And this was the actual condition of 

 the Hio-hlands durino; the times I have traced, from 

 an extravagant rate of increase in population, coupled 

 with no increase at all in knowledge, or in capital, or 

 in industry. Hence, when all these conditions began 

 to be reversed, a contrast arose with the former 

 wretchedness which seems incredible. So it has been 

 with the productive power of land in Tyree, where — 

 but only where — the farms could be rendered ac- 

 cessible to modern methods. This is the explana- 

 tion of the increase of rent upon such farms. 

 It is quite exceptional. It is more like the in- 

 crease of value which arises on the discovery of 

 a new country. It may almost be said to represent 

 the first advent of civilization in the settlement 



