464 HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



hills on which the pennons of liberty have ever floated in the breeze — from the 

 deep valleys which no foe has ever been able to subdue — and these are now 

 joined by the merchants and manufacturers of this great city, in the work of 

 agricultural, or rather, I may say, of national improvement. I do not rise to 

 return thanks for the toast in a spirit of undue humility, for, however unworthy 

 I may be as an individual, the class to which I belong deserve well of their 

 country and of their fellowmen. By none are they surpassed in loyalty to the 

 Sovereign, or in obedience to the laws. The Scottish system of agricul- 

 ture is now followed throughout the island, and in the land with which 

 your Grace (the chair was filled by the Duke of Sutherland, President 

 of the Society) is connected by ancestral ties, and where a Sinclair led 

 the way in agricultural improvement, the cry of the bittern and of the 

 moorcock has given place to the ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's 

 song. How short is the time since we sent our lean cattle to England, 

 in order to be fattened on the rich pastures of Kent ; now that trade is nearly 

 at an end. The steam engine has become our Highland drover ; and we 

 are enabled to carry our cattle to the great metropolitan mart of trade in 

 nearly as good condition as those that have luxuriated on the banks of the 

 Thames. How gratifying is it to witness not only the kindly feeling existing 

 between proprietor and tenant, but the perfect impartiality with which these 

 parties are treated in their exhibitions of stock. They compete on the terms of 

 most perfect equality, and justice is at all times impartially administered. 

 There is no lordly domination exercised on the one hand, or base and humiliat- 

 ing dependence shown on the other. The one party endeavours to prove their 

 nobihty by the amount of good they confer on their friends and neighbours ; 

 the others yield a willing homage to rank and power, when these are ennobled 

 by great and good actions. Mr Aitchison concluded an animated speech amid 

 much applause. 



At the Inverness Show Committee dinner in 1839, the Duke of Richmond 

 said there was one toast which he invariably heard given at all such meetings, 

 and which came best from the individual holding the situation he did. No 

 assembly of the Highland Society of Scotland could part without giving as a 

 toast that great, influential, and respectable body of the people — the Tenantry 

 of the countrj'. As a landlord, he felt that they would not accuse him in giving 

 the toast of any desire to acquire undue or high rents ; but as a landlord, and 

 as a subject of the Queen of England, he felt that there was no class of society 

 more valuable than the tenantry of the countrj'. He would give them ' The 

 Tenantry of the Northern districts of Scotland,' with many of whom he had 

 the honour of being personally acquainted, and he would combine with it the 

 ' Tenantry of the Empire at large, ' and he hoped they would never forget the 

 union which ought to exist betwixt the landlord, the tenant, and the labourer 

 — that bond which ensured the happiness of all classes of the community, and 

 bound them in friendly compact together in times of danger and of war. As a 

 landowner in the north of Scotland, and a Highlander, he especially wished 

 prosperity to the tenantry of these districts, and he hoped to meet many of 

 them at the show of to-morrow, and to reap equal, or more, if possible, 

 pleasure from the proceedings than he had already done, great as that had 

 been. 



