Caird deems to be as easy as ear-wigging Sir Robert Peel. But the bubble is already burst, and the fallacy of high farming will soon be thoroughly exploded. In the south, all Mr Caird's coagriculturists denounce his statements as utterly untrue, so far as relates to any possible profit from high farming; and, in the Highlands, to start the supposition of such a system finding place there would extort a shout of derision. Next to the poor Irish, the Scotch Highlanders are perhaps the most rancorously-reviled people upon earth. From the thunderings of the Times, down to the imbecile abuse of the scurviest penny-a-liner, the Irish canaille, we have it constantly asserted, are the idlest and least improvable of any population; and yet no allegation can be more utterly perfounded. The Irish have been a horribly oppressed people, and they have contracted many of the sinister qualities and slothful habits which are indicants of a state of slavery; but give them some of the facilities of active freedom, and you will see how hard Irishmen can work, and with what docility they will submit to improving instruction. So with the Highlanders: they are ruled, generally speaking, by harsh delegations of authority-the factor's iron rod of sordid supremacy; and they are so cramped by the denial of land—which is their proper scene of labour-that their industry cannot be called into adequate exercise. They lounge listlessly-not from want of energy, but from want of employment -and yet hold out the proper incentive to poor Donald-good wages, and those wages punctually paid (which, to the shame of employers, wages in the Highlands are not), and it will quickly be apparent what these hardy Celtic labourers can statedly and satisfactorily perform. But, whatever may be the faults of the Highlanders, they are clear at least from the imputation of that enormous folly which is now confessedly fixed upon the agricultural wiseacres of the south. High, far too high, are rents in the north of Scotland; but the Highlanders are not as yet so demented as to add to the pressure of high rents the permanent losses upon high farming. It may be said that the Highlanders are too poor to indulge in these patriotic experiments; to which we reply, in Shakspeare's words, that "their state is the more gracious;" for the poverty that keeps out of the Gazette is better, we conceive, than the patriotism that rushes into it! To our thinking, the most candid and straightforward champion of high farming is the valiant Lord Kinnaird. This upright nobleman, instead of going about

the bush, like other protectionists (for he is one in his way), tells us boldly that the great use of high rents is to stimulate high farming. The more his tenantry of the Carse of Gowrie are compelled to pay to their noble landlord, the more the land must be tried and tasked, by exhausting chemical husbandry, in order to draw forth all the recondite fertility of the stubborn soil. The capital for this benevolent outlay must come from the tenant's pocket; and, on balancing his yearly accounts-having devoted so much to the land and so much to the landlord-a worthy Inchture tenant finds himself pretty much in the predicament of the clients between the two lawyers, who divided the oysters and left the suitors to share the shells!

What these unwise gentry call high farming must not be confounded with good farming. The former is a vain attempt to eke out an exorbitant rent by a ruinous expenditure on the land, which when made more productive, only increases the felt evil. For what do low prices denote, but over-supply, which necessarily depresses the market? The protectionists see this, and their remedy is to close the ports against foreign competition, and thus restore the monopoly of the home market to the disconsolate corn-growers. To aid in repealing the repeal of the corn-laws is the sole drift of the clever writer in Blackwood, apart from the praiseworthy motive of earning some ten or fifteen guineas a sheet by his landlord lucubrations, besides baskets of game, and haunches of venison ! England's loyalty must be roused-all the pro aris et focis heroes must start forth as one man-and shout and fight for protection. Then, too, under the auspices of Blackwood-Teucro duce-the Scottish chivalry and clansmen must buckle on their armour-we mean, betake themselves to their cobs, and flourish their flailsand for WHAT? Why, in plain Saxon speech (for our Gaelic vocabulary is, we are sorry to say, very scanty), that landlords may get high rents by means of high prices, and that poor tenants may be ground to powder by exactions from which they can have no escape; for the monopoly of the home market gave, and would give again, the absolute despotism over the soil to extortionate landlords !

Therefore it is that at the risk of causing a little temporary displeasure," the hectic of a moment," to our protectionist subscribers who gathered at Tain and Dingwall, we beg to assure them that the present outcry for renewed protection is very far from

being the voice of wisdom. It is the cry of crafty landlords swelled by the shouts of some obsequious tenants, but is not the manly utterance of the true wants and wishes of sensible, unsordid Highlanders.

MR CAIRD AGAIN OR THE PEEL MISSIONARY TO IRELAND.

THE great agriculturist of Auchness having dispatched a pilotpamphlet to indicate his literary course, has now, it appears, come out as an established member of the republic of letters, and inflicted a lusty little volume upon the reading world. The price of his new work (we believe nine or ten shillings) seems rather heavy in these days of declension; but as we presume the illustrious Caird is about to exchange high farming for high book-making, he must do his best to make authorship as profitable as potato planting. The origin of mighty undertakings is an interesting theme, and therefore the story of Mr Caird's advent to Ireland, and his consequent concoction of a book of travels, must attract the attention of all enquiring minds. Our readers cannot have forgotten Sir Robert Peel's autumnal sojourn at Eilan Aigaswhat shots he fired-and what deer of Lord Lovat's he did not kill; but the statesman was not lost in the sportsman, as we shall speedily see. Mr Caird having committed to paper and print his astonishing revelations regarding the mystery of high farming, the ex-Premier pitched upon the Auchness romancer as just the man fitted to gather facts in support of his (Sir Robert's) renowned plan for the plantation of Connaught; and, upon an earnest representation of the matter to the Whig Government, it is alleged that Mr Caird was sent to investigate, at the public expense, Ireland's aptitude for high farming, with a special view to the "West of Ireland as a Field of Investment for Capital." Accordingly, the literary farmer of Baldoon (we were on the point of writing Balderdash) packs up his portmanteau, and departs with dignified speed for the sister island. We are sure, from his acknowledgments of innumerable attentions, that his right honourable patron provided him with a case of well-crammed credentials, calling upon all Peelites to come to the succour of their chief, by helping Mr Caird to puff off the plantation scheme. We can fancy Baldoon

filled with a sense of the important aid he was to render to his somewhat nonplussed employer

In my pocket I have letters,
Saying, help me or I die!

So Mr Caird pops over to Dublin, then repairs to the West, "skims o'er the plain" with Camilla swiftness of step, eating, drinking, and sleeping at every great man's house on his route, and swallowing down with his champagne every tale which his aristocratic hosts were pleased to palm upon him as to "the probable feeling of the population towards immigrant farmers," or, in other words, towards Peel's plantation schemers. But Mr Caird, in order to requite his noble and gentle entertainers, makes his pages do the work of the Times' supplement, by advertising countless farms which lords and baronets are desirous to let, and he puffs them off in a canny style, which would befit a Caledonian George Robins. To us, who know Ireland thoroughly, this seems the main drift of Mr Caird's book-for of sound, useful, or novel information respecting that country, the volume is as barren as the Bóg of Allen is of five shift crops, or other subtleties of Auchness husbandry, barring the potato. Even when Mr Caird falls upon a theme which it might be supposed his habits qualified him to descant upon, his failure of the faculty of discernment disables him from doing the slightest justice to the subject. For example, he meets with East Lothian farmers, who had transferred themselves to Ireland long before the fine plans of ruining themselves by means of high farming had seized hold of Scottish agriculturists; Mr Caird notices their success in the midst of surrounding wretchedness and failure, but he omits to tell us why the Scotch are incomparably the most eligible improvers for Ireland. The fact is, that their thrifty habits, and economical mode of livingtheir attention to small savings and small gains-fit them to give a good example in a very poor country, which would be equally damaged by English expensiveness and Irish improvidence. As we do not meet with anything in Mr Caird's travels which may not be found in the commonest road-book or gazeteer, we will spare our readers the recital of his common-places. We take it, that our tourist went to Ireland as a sort of Connaught Ranger on the staff of Sir Robert Peel, whose grand plantation project is still uppermost as a stepping-stone to another snatch of premiership. "A comprehensive scheme, like that developed by Sir

Robert Peel in the last session of Parliament, is absolutely necessary for the safety of the west of Ireland," asserts Caird the confidant. But we assert, in our turn, that Sir Robert Peel's plantation scheme, so far as it could be comprehended (for it was a chaos of contrarieties), would, if acted upon, inflict an Iliad of woes upon Ireland. The ex-Premier takes a line out of history, just as a cotton-spinner draws a thread out of a handful of wool. He reads that Sir Francis Bacon planned the plantation of Ulster, which was a depopulated country; and Sir Robert Peel proposes to make a plantation in Connaught, for which the way is to be prepared by driving out and expatriating the inhabitants, and, in effect, confiscating their property. Truly the mantle of the Verulam philosopher has not fallen upon the Drayton man of money."

It, however, may be satisfactory to the friends of Ireland to be made aware, that there is at this moment going forward in the heart of Connaught a plantation scheme of much better promise than Sir Robert Peel's, although unprotected by London companies of gormandising speechifyers. The Society of Friends have purchased an immense tract of territory in Galway, with the view of spreading agricultural improvement—exciting industry, by giving a just and regularly-paid recompense for labour-and thus planting civilisation and comfort in a region teeming with neglected and oppressed human beings. Over this establishment-Colmanstown, model farm, Glantane-the society have placed Doctor Bewley, a man to whom Irish agriculture owes more of institutional instruction than to any other person. Doctor Bewley has given up a high position in a lucrative profession, to devote himself to the arts of amelioration in the wilds of Connaught; and his success is commensurate with his zeal. This is the true mode of effecting improvements—very different from orations after a Lord Mayor's dinner, or book-making perpetrated by missionary Caird!

TENANT RIGHT.

A writer who feels desirous of rendering any real service to the present generation must be endued with no common share of boldness and independence of mind; for he has to reckon upon finding himself in constant conflict with the popular fallacies of the day; and these same fraudulent crotchets put forward too with bluster