There Are Some However Who Think That This Emigration Has Raised
Terrour Disproportionate To Its Real Evil; And That It Is Only A
New Mode Of Doing What Was Always Done.
The Highlands, they say,
never maintained their natural inhabitants; but the people, when
they found themselves too numerous, instead of extending
cultivation, provided for themselves by a more compendious method,
and sought better fortune in other countries.
They did not indeed
go away in collective bodies, but withdrew invisibly, a few at a
time; but the whole number of fugitives was not less, and the
difference between other times and this, is only the same as
between evaporation and effusion.
This is plausible, but I am afraid it is not true. Those who went
before, if they were not sensibly missed, as the argument supposes,
must have gone either in less number, or in a manner less
detrimental, than at present; because formerly there was no
complaint. Those who then left the country were generally the idle
dependants on overburdened families, or men who had no property;
and therefore carried away only themselves. In the present
eagerness of emigration, families, and almost communities, go away
together. Those who were considered as prosperous and wealthy sell
their stock and carry away the money. Once none went away but the
useless and poor; in some parts there is now reason to fear, that
none will stay but those who are too poor to remove themselves, and
too useless to be removed at the cost of others.
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