r 'if property is a good and desirable thing, the very smallest
quantity of it is good and desirable.' It was obvious to Mr. Laing that
the forty families of two or three Norwegian highland glens, 'each
possessing and living on its own little spot of ground and farming well
or ill, as the case might be, were in a better and happier state, and
formed a more rationally constituted society, than if the whole belonged
to one of these families (and it would be no great estate), while the
other thirty-nine families were tenants and farmers.'

Mr. Laing found the happy agricultural population of Norway 'much
better lodged than our labouring and middling classes, even in the south
of Scotland;' and that no nation was at that period either better
housed, or so well provided with fuel. The standard of living appeared
to be higher in Norway than in most of our Scotch highland districts,
although the materials were the same, namely, oatmeal, barley meal,
potatoes, fish--fresh and salted--cheese, butter, and milk. He
understood that it was even usual for the yeoman farmers to have animal
food--'salt beef and black-puddings'--at least twice a week. At all
events, he says, four meals a day formed the regular fare, and with two
of those meals even the labourers had a glass of home-made brandy,
distilled from potatoes by the yeoman, who 'could malt and distil in
every way he pleased,' and thereby 'make free use of his agricultural
produce,' with the result of 'increasing the general prosperity,
improving the condition of the people, and promoting the increase of
their numbers.'[7]

There was, at the time of Mr. Laing's residence in Norway, 'small
difference in the way of living between high and low, because every man
lived from the produce of his farm, and observed the utmost simplicity
and economy with regard to everything that took money out of his
pocket.' Furniture and clothes, except the yeoman's Sunday hat, were all
home-made. 'Here was a whole population, in an old European country,
dealing direct with Nature, as it were, for every article, without the
intervention of money, or even of barter.' It was only the small yeomen
on the verge of the Fjeld, or in the glens, far above the level of the
land producing corn, and the inhabitants of districts less favoured by
nature, 'whose common bread consisted of the bark of trees, mixed and
ground up with ill-ripened oats; but even in their case, trout, dried
and salted for winter, was no