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Having communicated these observations while in the
press to an eminent merchant and manufacturer at Glasgow, a man of
distinguished judgment and information, and intimately acquainted with the
Highlands, I was favoured with the following remarks:
You are quite correct in what you say about finding
employment for the Highlanders in the manufacturing towns. We have had a
good deal of experience upon that part of your statement at our mills at
******* where we weave as well as spin. We have
at different times, when wanting hands, recruited from the Isle of Mull,
and brought to many families from thence, but we scarcely ever derived
benefit but from the children: the grown up people (for want of early
associations, I suppose,) seeming almost to be without a
capacity of acquiring dexterity in the very common operations.
What you say upon the introduction of manufactures
into the Highlands is unanswerable: they possess no advantages to induce
the attempt.—The only manufacture that ever occurred to me as naturally
connected with the Highlands, was to prepare and spin up the wool from
their own sheep, something of which I believe is already done at Bunaw in
Argylleshire, and the yarn sold in the clothing counties in England. |
