THE HIGHLANDS. 331 



change has been made in their general mode of life. 

 Like the sheep, they never enter a shed, but live, night 

 and day, summer and winter, in the open air, and ob- 

 tain their only food upon the mountains, where the hand 

 of man has never scattered a seed. 



The British, as a nation, are rough -mannered. They do 

 things harshly, and often take the wrong way of doing 

 them when really their ultimate object is right. The 

 heirs of the large Scotch fiefs evidently went too far in 

 employing force to reduce their vassals. It would have 

 been better had they trusted to time which soon passes 

 for the change to have taken place of its own accord. 

 Even although constraint had been necessary, it was 

 scarcely advisable to have exercised it towards a people 

 whose devotion to them amounted even to fanaticism. 

 With this exception, the effect of the displacement has 

 been beneficial, useful, and well ordered, both in an 

 agricultural and political point of view. This has been 

 abundantly proved, after fifty years' experience. The 

 Scotch themselves allow that, if there exists any ground 

 for regret, it is that the operation has not everywhere 

 been as complete as in Sutherlandshire. A sufficient 

 justification for the expulsion of their predecessors ap- 

 pears in the fact that, in those parts where the High- 

 landers still remain too numerously congregated, they 

 are in a state of misery, and the force of circumstances 

 must no doubt cause them gradually to disappear. 



In his entire condemnation of what took place in the 

 Highlands, M. de Sismondi has fallen into several errors. 

 He has spoken of Sutherlandshire as a country in the 

 ordinary state of fertility and civilisation ; and what he 

 regarded as an abuse of property, has made him forget 

 the insufficiency of production and the danger of a state 

 of barbarism. When a soil and climate are not suffi- 



