eft if public generosity had not interposed.

The task of those who undertook to distribute the large relief fund
subscribed was attended with great difficulty, and involved a solemn
responsibility of the highest kind. They appear to us, on a review of
their arrangements, to have proceeded with judgment and good feeling;
anxious, on the one hand, to alleviate want, and on the other, to
avert those moral mischiefs that follow in the wake of gratuitous or
indiscriminate liberality. Their object necessarily was, to do as much
good and as little harm as the emergency would permit.

Something has recently been said of the great extent to which the
distress in those districts was originally over-stated by the
individuals who came forward to rouse the benevolence of their
countrymen on behalf of the Highlands. We are by no means prepared to
join in this view. It is impossible to describe the consequences of a
coming famine with mathematical precision. Besides, the destitution is
not yet over. And it is at least clear, even as to the past, that
_except for the exertions of the proprietors_, which might or might
not have been so largely made, the destitution would have fully borne
out the predictions which were uttered. It could not with certainty be
assumed that the smaller and less wealthy proprietors, in particular,
would have been able to make the great sacrifices which they have so
generously submitted to, and without which the people of Wester Ross
and Skye, of Islay and Colonsay, and many other places, would have
laid on the relief fund a burden far heavier than it has had to bear.

This at least is certain, that the fund has not been dispensed upon
any extravagant views of the existence of destitution. The large
surplus that remains on hand, demonstrates the caution and economy
with which the distribution has been conducted. The money has not been
lavished merely because it had been subscribed; and the difficult
object has been accomplished, of keeping in check those demands which
were likely to become more clamorous and more unreasonable, in
proportion as the means existed of satisfying them.

It would serve little purpose to examine in detail the operations of
the Relief Board, which are already before the public in the reports
which they have published from time to time. It is, perhaps,
sufficient to say, that they present, in a great degree, the features
which might have been looked for in the working of a scheme