Where
There Is No Commerce Nor Manufacture, He That Is Born Poor Can
Scarcely Become Rich; And If None Are Able To Buy Estates, He That
Is Born To Land Cannot Annihilate His Family By Selling It.
This
was once the state of these countries.
Perhaps there is no
example, till within a century and half, of any family whose estate
was alienated otherwise than by violence or forfeiture. Since
money has been brought amongst them, they have found, like others,
the art of spending more than they receive; and I saw with grief
the chief of a very ancient clan, whose Island was condemned by law
to be sold for the satisfaction of his creditors.
The name of highest dignity is Laird, of which there are in the
extensive Isle of Sky only three, Macdonald, Macleod, and
Mackinnon. The Laird is the original owner of the land, whose
natural power must be very great, where no man lives but by
agriculture; and where the produce of the land is not conveyed
through the labyrinths of traffick, but passes directly from the
hand that gathers it to the mouth that eats it. The Laird has all
those in his power that live upon his farms. Kings can, for the
most part, only exalt or degrade. The Laird at pleasure can feed
or starve, can give bread, or withold it. This inherent power was
yet strengthened by the kindness of consanguinity, and the
reverence of patriarchal authority. The Laird was the father of
the Clan, and his tenants commonly bore his name. And to these
principles of original command was added, for many ages, an
exclusive right of legal jurisdiction.
This multifarious, and extensive obligation operated with force
scarcely credible. Every duty, moral or political, was absorbed in
affection and adherence to the Chief. Not many years have passed
since the clans knew no law but the Laird's will. He told them to
whom they should be friends or enemies, what King they should obey,
and what religion they should profess.
When the Scots first rose in arms against the succession of the
house of Hanover, Lovat, the Chief of the Frasers, was in exile for
a rape. The Frasers were very numerous, and very zealous against
the government. A pardon was sent to Lovat. He came to the
English camp, and the clan immediately deserted to him.
Next in dignity to the Laird is the Tacksman; a large taker or
lease-holder of land, of which he keeps part, as a domain, in his
own hand, and lets part to under tenants. The Tacksman is
necessarily a man capable of securing to the Laird the whole rent,
and is commonly a collateral relation. These tacks, or subordinate
possessions, were long considered as hereditary, and the occupant
was distinguished by the name of the place at which he resided. He
held a middle station, by which the highest and the lowest orders
were connected. He paid rent and reverence to the Laird, and
received them from the tenants. This tenure still subsists, with
its original operation, but not with the primitive stability.
Since the islanders, no longer content to live, have learned the
desire of growing rich, an ancient dependent is in danger of giving
way to a higher bidder, at the expense of domestick dignity and
hereditary power. The stranger, whose money buys him preference,
considers himself as paying for all that he has, and is indifferent
about the Laird's honour or safety. The commodiousness of money is
indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy,
and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be
tempted to forego.
I have found in the hither parts of Scotland, men not defective in
judgment or general experience, who consider the Tacksman as a
useless burden of the ground, as a drone who lives upon the product
of an estate, without the right of property, or the merit of
labour, and who impoverishes at once the landlord and the tenant.
The land, say they, is let to the Tacksman at six-pence an acre,
and by him to the tenant at ten-pence. Let the owner be the
immediate landlord to all the tenants; if he sets the ground at
eight-pence, he will increase his revenue by a fourth part, and the
tenant's burthen will be diminished by a fifth.
Those who pursue this train of reasoning, seem not sufficiently to
inquire whither it will lead them, nor to know that it will equally
shew the propriety of suppressing all wholesale trade, of shutting
up the shops of every man who sells what he does not make, and of
extruding all whose agency and profit intervene between the
manufacturer and the consumer. They may, by stretching their
understandings a little wider, comprehend, that all those who by
undertaking large quantities of manufacture, and affording
employment to many labourers, make themselves considered as
benefactors to the publick, have only been robbing their workmen
with one hand, and their customers with the other. If Crowley had
sold only what he could make, and all his smiths had wrought their
own iron with their own hammers, he would have lived on less, and
they would have sold their work for more. The salaries of
superintendents and clerks would have been partly saved, and partly
shared, and nails been sometimes cheaper by a farthing in a
hundred. But then if the smith could not have found an immediate
purchaser, he must have deserted his anvil; if there had by
accident at any time been more sellers than buyers, the workmen
must have reduced their profit to nothing, by underselling one
another; and as no great stock could have been in any hand, no
sudden demand of large quantities could have been answered and the
builder must have stood still till the nailer could supply him.
According to these schemes, universal plenty is to begin and end in
universal misery.
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