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. I was told that the maids
have sheep, and are allowed to spin for their own clothing; perhaps
they have no pecuniary wages, or none but in very wealthy families.
The state of life, which has hitherto been purely pastoral, begins
now to be a little variegated with commerce; but novelties enter by
degrees, and till one mode has fully prevailed over the other, no
settled notion can be formed.
Such is the system of insular subordination, which, having little
variety, cannot afford much delight in the view, nor long detain
the mind in contemplation. The inhabitants were for a long time
perhaps not unhappy; but their content was a muddy mixture of pride
and ignorance, an indifference for pleasures which they did not
know, a blind veneration for their chiefs, and a strong conviction
of their own importance.
Their pride has been crushed by the heavy hand of a vindictive
conqueror, whose seventies have been followed by laws, which,
though they cannot be called cruel, have produced much discontent,
because they operate upon the surface of life, and make every eye
bear witness to subjection.
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