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The landlord enlarges his farms to make way for a mode
of agriculture or pasturage, which he conceives more advantageous. He
removes the former occupants, and admits a person of more understanding,
and more efficient capital: he makes a provision for those who may be
dispossessed, by offering them a small tenement; but pride and irritation
scorn to accept his provision.
Where it is found more profitable to lay a district under grass to the
half or two-thirds of its extent, it is obvious, that unless you make a
previous provision of some kind, many must leave their country to seek
food and employment in some other place. In this case, one of the most
improveable farms should be divided into crofts or
fields of one or three acres; and a judicious selection should be made of
those to whom they should be offered; for some men, who pride
themselves upon being men of spirit, would spurn at the thought of
descending from the rank of a tenant into the station of a crofter.
If a man of this kind, however, refuses any rational accommodation, the
country is better without him; he is ripe for emigration. He may be
cured by changing his residence. His spirit is not sound. This is the
touchstone.
These expressions are rather too severe to be applied
to a feeling so natural and so universal among mankind,. The desire
of bettering our condition, the reluctance and mortification that is felt
at any retrograde step, seem to be almost inseparable from the
human mind. They may be traced in every rank of society: the greatest
monarch on earth is not exempt from their influence, nor is the meanest
peasant. If these feelings meant with indulgence in one rank, ought they
to be censured with so much rigour in another?—We do not think it
extraordinary that a gentleman of large property should be averse to sink
into the station of a farmer or a shopkeeper: the reverend author himself
would not, perhaps, be well satisfied if he were reduced to the condition
of a small tenant: and is the tenant to be blamed because he too clings to
the small degree of rank he possesses, and will not submit to sink in the
scale of society without an effort to maintain his station?
in this passage Mr. Irvine has perhaps been influenced
by a glimpse of the arguments which are insisted on in
these Observations; and by this he has been led to a practical conclusion
more just than the general tendency of his work can be deemed. He
certainly cannot be accused of being a friend to emigration; yet if the
gentlemen of the Highlands agree with him in the sentiment that the
country is better without those whose "spirit," as he describes it,
"is-not sound" they will not find .any amongst
the emigrants to excite their regret. |
