ployed their little capital in emigrating to
Canada and the States; and there, in most cases, the little capital
increased, and a rude plenty continues to be enjoyed by their
descendants. Many thousands more, however, fell down upon the coasts of
the country, and, on moss-covered moors or bare promontories, ill suited
to repay the labours of the agriculturist, commenced a sort of
amphibious life as crofters and fishermen. And, located on an ungenial
soil, and prosecuting with but indifferent skill a precarious trade,
their little capital dribbled out of their hands, and they became the
poorest of men. Meanwhile, in some parts of the Highlands and Islands a
busy commerce sprang up, which employed--much to the profit of the
landlords--many thousands of the inhabitants. The kelp manufacture
rendered inhospitable islets and tracts of bleak rocky shore, rich in
sea-weed, of as much value to the proprietors as the best land in
Scotland; and, under the impetus given by full employment, and, if not
ample, at least remunerative pay, population increased. Suddenly,
however, Free Trade, in its first approaches, destroyed the trade in
kelp; and then the discovery of a cheap mode of manufacturing soda out
of common salt secured its ruin beyond the power of legislation to
retrieve. Both the people and landlords experienced in the kelp
districts the evils which a ruined commerce always leaves behind it. Old
Highland families disappeared from amid the aristocracy and landowners
of Scotland; and the population of extensive islands and sea-boards of
the country, from being no more than adequate, suddenly became
oppressively redundant. It required, however, another drop to make the
full cup run over. The potatoes had become, as I have shown, the staple
food of the Highlander; and when, in 1846, the potato-blight came on,
the people, most of them previously stripped of their little capitals,
and divested of their employment, were deprived of their food, and
ruined at a blow. The same stroke which did little more than slightly
impinge on the comforts of the people of the Lowlands, utterly
prostrated the Highlanders; and ever since, the sufferings of famine
have become chronic along the bleak shores and rugged islands of at
least the north-western portion of our country. Nor is it perhaps the
worst part of the evil that takes the form of clamorous want: so heavily
have the famines borne on a class which were not absolutely the poor
when they