of Edinh'imjh, Session 1882-83. 
125 
grew into the chiefs and the lairds, the feuars and kindly tenants of 
later days, of whom the- cottars and crofters are in no sense repre- 
sentatives. Here, again, I would point out how dangerous it is to 
refer to analogies in those early days without due care in establish- 
ing their identity with the modern circumstances they are intended 
to illustrate. It is a safer course to let these dead systems bury 
their dead — and to apply ourselves to the careful study of our own 
social problems by the brighter light of our own social progress. In 
that light it humbly appears to me that the frequent recurrence of 
Highland distress is a reproach on our modern economy from which 
ancient systems were free, however that freedom was obtained. It 
is foreign to the subject of which I treat to pursue this subject, 
but this I may say, that dealing with people who have been for 
ages habituated to be led, to be dependent for guidance on others, to 
be protected by others, who are only emancipated but not yet free, 
if our modern system is to fulfil the duties it has inherited from 
the past, it must supply that initiation and guidance and motive 
power and influence which of old, under very different circumstances 
and in very different directions, the chiefs of these people supplied : 
to parody a well-known aphorism, relief is no cure : it is the proper 
task of modern economy to show these people the method, to induce 
them to adopt the measures, and even to supply them with the 
means to win that independence which is a nobler, and will be a 
more useful inheritance than any that they claim from the distant 
past. 
I had intended to say something as to the taxation on the land 
of these ancient days and its relation to our modern imposts, but I 
have already far exceeded the limits of my paper and must conclude. 
I have fulfilled my purpose if I have directed attention to, and 
created any interest in, the salient features of those ancient tenures 
which are in any way reflected in our present social system ; and if 
I have succeeded in demonstrating that after all it is more as studies 
and as cabinet specimens than as models that we must regard them j 
that they were only the nurseries of society, not even its schools ; 
interesting and picturesque no doubt, attractive but deceptivej 
festooned with the mosses and encrusted with the lichens that 
adorn the decay while they conceal the defects of hoar antiquity^ 
