To the southern inhabitants of Scotland, the state of the mountains
and the islands is equally unknown with that of Borneo or Sumatra:
Of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest. They
are strangers to the language and the manners, to the advantages
and wants of the people, whose life they would model, and whose
evils they would remedy.
Nothing is less difficult than to procure one convenience by the
forfeiture of another. A soldier may expedite his march by
throwing away his arms. To banish the Tacksman is easy, to make a
country plentiful by diminishing the people, is an expeditious mode
of husbandry; but little abundance, which there is nobody to enjoy,
contributes little to human happiness.
As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of
intelligence must direct the man of labour. If the Tacksmen be
taken away, the Hebrides must in their present state be given up to
grossness and ignorance; the tenant, for want of instruction, will
be unskilful, and for want of admonition will be negligent. The
Laird in these wide estates, which often consist of islands remote
from one another, cannot extend his personal influence to all his
tenants; and the steward having no dignity annexed to his
character, can have little authority among men taught to pay
reverence only to birth, and who regard the Tacksman as their
hereditary superior; nor can the steward have equal zeal for the
prosperity of an estate profitable only to the Laird, with the
Tacksman, who has the Laird's income involved in his own.
The only gentlemen in the Islands are the Lairds, the Tacksmen, and
the Ministers, who frequently improve their livings by becoming
farmers. If the Tacksmen be banished, who will be left to impart
knowledge, or impress civility? The Laird must always be at a
distance from the greater part of his lands; and if he resides at
all upon them, must drag his days in solitude, having no longer
either a friend or a companion; he will therefore depart to some
more comfortable residence, and leave the tenants to the wisdom and
mercy of a factor.
Of tenants there are different orders, as they have greater or less
stock. Land is sometimes leased to a small fellowship, who live in
a cluster of huts, called a Tenants Town, and are bound jointly and
separately for the payment of their rent. These, I believe, employ
in the care of their cattle, and the labour of tillage, a kind of
tenants yet lower; who having a hut with grass for a certain number
of cows and sheep, pay their rent by a stipulated quantity of
labour.
The condition of domestick servants, or the price of occasional
labour, I do not know with certainty.
