back quite persuaded that his agreements with Highland magnates were mere moonshine! All these forced expatriations are, in truth, the product of blind oppression on the part of the proprietors; and consequently the poor creatures who remain are never benefited by the departure of the wretched beings who remove. Shipload after shipload might be dispatched from Glenelg, but Mr Baillie's possessions would only exhibit more solitude and unfruitfulness; for he has no liberality of mind or largeness of heart to fit him for being the benefactor of the crushed cultivators of the soil. Whatsoever sums, therefore, have been squandered on Mr Baillie or other landlords, with the view of ameliorating the condition of crofters remaining on their estates, may be considered as wholly thrown away; whereas, if any funds have been so applied as to increase the comforts of emigrants during their voyage, the bounty of the Board was, we conceive, humanely and properly bestowed. The subject of emigration leads us to remark, that much of the supplemental misery in the towns of Scotland is occasioned by the influx of immigrants. Penetrate into the wynds of Edinburgh, Glasgow, or, in short, any town of magnitude, and you will find that the pauper population is continually receiving accessions from the rural districts, where the peasantry have been ruthlessly dispossessed of their little holdings. In this way, the poor's rate of towns is incessantly increased by the impolicy and injustice of landed proprietors, who drive their dependants elsewhere to acquire a settlement of sorrowful pauperization.

Now, one of the vaunted purposes of the Highland Destitution Board was to check the progress of pauperism in those distressed districts where their relief operations were chiefly carried on. Mr Skene, in a letter to Captains Eliott and Craigie, dated September 1849, states this—but in the periphrastic style which characterises all his compositions. "The committee have been desirous so to regulate the employment of the people, as to encourage habits of industry-to stimulate those resources upon which the people must depend, when all extraneous assistance is withdrawn-and to leave behind them works of permanent utility to the community." All this sounds very fine; but we think it would puzzle Mr Skene or his aides-des-camp to fix their finger on a single locality throughout the Highlands and Islands where these objects have been attained. We can aver for ourselves, that we have travelled in the tracks of the Board's relief operations, and that we could never

meet with the marks of any permanent improvement effected by the labours of their officials. We found a huge staff of stipendiaries on liberal pay; and multitudes of starving supplicants receiving a modicum of meal which barely sustained life, and for which an amount of labour was exacted such as only good wages would have warranted; and this we proclaim to be the cruel error which converted the beneficence of the public into an instrument of churlish oppression. The staple food of the peasantry had wholly failed, and subsistence for the destitute must be introduced into the famine-stricken districts. With such ample resources as were commanded by the Board, there was no difficulty in securing supplies of food, and in distributing it to famishing families. To establish a centrical store-to relieve applicants in the first pressing instance --and then to record the names and abodes of all relieved, so as to test their condition by means of active, close enquiry—these were the duties of the Board's officers. But this scrutiny was too troublesome for Captain Eliott and his subordinates; and to ease themselves, while ruling rigorously over the destitute, the so-called destitution test was mischievously concerted, and mercilessly enforced. Every one now knows that relief was refused to famishing Highlanders except on the condition of giving a day's work for a pound of meal! The Eliott test, or death by starvation, being the only alternative, thousands of miserable human beings were made to work for a quantum of food which, in the case of an able-bodied unemployed man, would do no more than maintain mere existence. As the common calamity, moreover, was the failure of subsistence, the least gleam of wisdom would have enlightened the Board into the propriety of extending corn cultivation in lieu of the perished potato, and thus turning misfortune to account, by enlarging and ameliorating the agriculture of the Highlands. But no! Following the preposterous plans which Treasury Trevelyan had perpetrated in Ireland, the peasantry were formed into gangs, to begin useless roads, never meant to be finished; nor could efficient labour be expected from such miserably fed road-makers. We have seen scores of these abortive undertakings, disgraceful proofs of the utter incompetency of the Board's officers; nor have we ever noticed a completed piece of road, except where some private interest had exercised a jobbing influence. But the pith of our censure is directed against the fatal loss of opportunity for calling forth the industry of the Highlanders. With such a com

mand of capital, the Board might have infused the elements of prosperous energy into the most distressed districts; and dissipated sloth by giving adequate encouragement to honest exertion. The people might have been employed in improving the approaches to their little towns, which, in winter, are all but inaccessible. They might have been aided in the cultivation of their own crofts; and seed (which the board obstinately persisted in refusing) should most certainly have been distributed to them. Succours of various kinds, all tending not only to relieve present wants, but to promote permanent benefit, would readily have suggested themselves to minds capable of comprehending the truth, that it was a charitable fund which the Board had the administration of, not a poor's rate, to be allocated according to positive law. And this, in fact, was the Board's monstrous and incurable blunder. They dealt with the poor, designed to be relieved by the product of philanthropic contribution, more rigorously than paupers were dealt with by the officials who doled out pittances provided by compulsory taxation. No parochial potentates ever practised the tithe of the severities conjunctly devised, and inflicted by Mr Skene and Captain Eliott. We write from the vivid recollection of the tyranny we witnessed; and in an early article we shall, we think, succeed in shewing how the benevolence of the bountiful has been frustrated by the abominable system which the Highland Destitution Board has sanctioned. They have not only counteracted the charitable purpose confided to them for execution, but they have gone far to dry up the fountains of public sympathy, inasmuch as a great trust, created in behalf of the poor, has fallen into faithless hands. Let us not be misunderstood. We do not charge the Highland Board with criminal malversation; but we allege, that their want of judgment has been as injurious as fraud or embezzle

ment.

PRESENT DESTITUTION IN THE HEBRIDES-HIGHLAND RELIEF

BOARD.

We have received from different correspondents, on whose truth and accuracy we are justified in placing dependence, very distressing details of the lamentable destitution which at this moment prevails in Skye, Lewis, and other islands. Statements are made to us which, if addressed to other quarters, would be treated with

some degree of incredulity, but which from our personal know- \ ledge, we can, unhappily, give implicit credit to. The great point to be ascertained by any philanthropic enquirers, visiting distressed districts, is the nature and extent of the resources of the people. There can be no mystery in the matter. Go to a region where the cry of absolute want prevails, and you will find famishing families who formerly derived a precarious subsistence from the potato, now driven to the most miserable shifts to eke out a meal once a day! In the vicinage of sea-shores there is a constant search for shell-fish—a dietary of the most dangerous kind, and invariably productive of dysentery, when long continued. Add a few chance turnips to an occasional handful of meal, and you have, in fact, the whole inventory of wretched fare which you are likely to trace in the abodes of Highland sufferers from starvation. When we use the term wretched, we do more so to denote the deficiency than the quality of these latter elements of food. Want of subsistence is the existing calamity in parts of the Highlands and Islands; and this want implies every other painful pressure; for clothing and household plenishing must melt away where families are subjected to the cravings of hunger. As for the produce of an acre or two of poor land, be it what it may, it cannot sustain a family, however small; and as for money to purchase meal, where can it come from, but from the wages of labour; and of work there is none; for proprietors do not or cannot give employment to the peasantry. We speak now of districts in which destitution sorely extends; for an employing proprietor forbids the notion of a famishing peasantry. And it must be further borne in mind, that the very mention of possible labour, excludes all idea of relief from the operation the poor law; for the ablebodied are clearly disentitled to any allocation of the funds raised by parochial assessment. Here, then, we find the class of destipoor for whose succour an immense aggregate of subscriptions was placed at the disposal of the Highland Relief Board; and who are now in as pinching a state of starvation as when the first distribution of food was made in the spring of 1847. Is it really so? may be very naturally asked by benevolent persons who contributed to swell the Highland Relief Fund. Are we so urgently called upon to dispense renewed aid to the objects of our former bounty? Yes; such is the melancholy truth; and much of this sad necessity is attributable to the false principles upon which the

tute

Highland Relief Board so perniciously acted. The basis of all their error and failure is perceptible in the following resolution. "All employment given directly by the Board, upon which the recipients of relief are to work, must be upon the principle that the whole labour of the recipients is taken in return for a bare subsistence." Now we undertake to say, that no parties to whom was confided the command of a charitable fund, were warranted in laying down so unjust, so inhuman, and so inevitably injurious a regulation as this. Where food is to be distributed among starving multitudes, quite irrespective of labour, it may be a question of prudence whether the quantity should not be adjusted with severe economy, so as to diffuse the largest amount of frugal relief to the greatest number of recipients. But when the principle of labour was adopted, the case assumed an entirely different aspect, and a sufficient recompense should have been honestly given for work actually done. Instead of being the conscientious employers of the poor, the Relief Board became the fraudulent exactors of a maximum of labour for a minimum of food, and thus frustrated the intentions of the bountiful, by rendering the poor permanently pauperized! The rigour of Pharaoh's taskmasters towards the Israelite burden-bearers is abundantly attested in Holy Writ, and yet it fell far short of the iniquitous, and intolerable severity of the Highland Relief Board; for bitter as was the bondage of the hard-worked children of Abraham, we have it clearly on record that they did eat bread to the full-thus plainly proving that even the implacable enforcers of the orders of the Egyptian tyrant, never went the starvation lengths of a Christian committee of destitution relievers! No thought can fully conceive; no tongue can adequately tell, the mischievous results of so unfeeling a system as this. It cheated the poor; turned into gall and wormwood the sweet outpourings of generous sympathy; gratitude was stifled; industry was enervated; and the poor creatures whom public bounty had meant to succour, were plunged into a more degrading depth of humiliation by the Board's merciless method of extorting labour. To all who may deem our picture overcharged, we say, Go to Lochalsh; visit Glenelg; run over Skye; pass through the Uists; cross over to Barra; return to other islands, or districts on the mainland, where the Board's operations have been wide and continuous; and the truth will soon force itself upon your mind, that permanent evil has been inflicted upon