t down and curse their day; they appeal to the sympathies of their
more successful brethren; they lean idly wherever they can find
support; and failing this, they starve in a body, or drift into the
workhouses. In such circumstances, men seldom think even of the
obvious expedient of changing their locality, far less of changing
their employment. They are rooted to the soil like a plant; when the
work they have been accustomed to is no longer wanted, they cross
their hands; and so they remain, and wither, and despair, and die.
Thus when the kelp business was at an end, the Scotch Highlanders sat
down in their helpless hunger, till they were swept as with a besom
out of the land they cumbered. Yet what Mechi has done for his Tiptree
bog on a large scale, with expensive machinery, and hired labour,
might have been done by each of them on a small scale, without
expense, and with his own labour. A wholesome living might be wrested
by determined men from the wildest nook in Scotland, and the sea alone
would support a large population. What the people did, however, was
merely to pick up such shell-fish as the waves chanced to throw at
their feet, and hold out their lean hands for national charity.

As we ascend in society, a similar spectacle presents itself. All
trades and professions, without exception, are crowded with once
well-doing individuals, who now serve only to cumber the ground, and
obstruct the progress of others. Whatever be his reverses, a man seems
to think it necessary to abide by his employment and his station, even
if he starves in the one, and excites pity or ridicule in the other.
He will not see that he has suffered shipwreck; that he has been
thrown into entirely new circumstances; that he must disengage himself
from old habits and prejudices, and construct anew his scheme of life.
He is one of a tribe, and must stand or fall by his profession and his
order. He has lost all perception of his own individuality, and is
afraid to take a single step that is not prescribed by custom and
example. But, independently of the Robinson Crusoes of the class, many
such slaves of conventionalism achieve their freedom while intending
only to better their condition. They emigrate to a new country, and
find themselves actually in a desert island--an oasis in the
wilderness--where it is necessary to work at whatever employment
offers the means of subsistence--to resort to all sorts of shifts and
expedients, and to submit