' THE SCOTCH MAIL ' 99 



It is notoriously difficult to get a straight answer 

 from a Scotchman, but this year, in conversation with 

 a very intelligent specimen of the Highlander, who 

 was, by the way, an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. 

 Gladstone, the replies that I elicited to my very direct 

 questions were so emphatic in favour of the existing 

 state of things, founded on his own intimate know- 

 ledge, that I wished some of those narrow city dwellers, 

 feeble in body and spiteful and envious in mind, who 

 so far as they dare attack everything in the nature of 

 sport and amusement, could have heard him on this 

 well-worn subject. 



He would have none of the small crofter, who 

 starves himself and his family for a false sentiment 

 which ties him to the barren rock or spongy morass 

 which never can support them ; he was all in favour 

 of the large grazing farm of many thousand acres, and 

 of the wealthy sporting tenant from the South, who 

 comes to distribute his guineas and to repeople the 

 once famine-stricken glen. The men, he urged with 

 vehement sincerity and actual knowledge, who clamour 

 for the small holdings, have not the means to stock 

 them, nor those who encourage them the knowledge 

 to show them how to do it. How could these people 

 divide and pasture a hill, command a market for their 

 stock, or live in any fashion upon their allotted piece 



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