had at first, and consequently the loss of others is exactly proportioned to his gain. Not so the farmer. His gain is inseparably connected with the increase of the general mass of human provision, and consequently others, instead of losing in proportion to his gains, are benefited in that proportion. He may indeed fail of enriching himself by his enterprizes. While he materially contributes to enrich the whole society, by making the quantity of food annually produced larger than it was before, his individual share may not be augmented by his efforts.

Those who employ their capital in agricultural improvement, in Great Britain, employ it under greater disadvantages than are incident to any other species of industry. They are commonly obliged to hire the use of the land, under such restrictions and burthens, and with a tenure so slavish and precarious, that their gains are necessarily both small and uncertain. The proprietors of land, who only can improve the ground with great and certain advantage, are generally disqualified, by prejudice and education, for any such attempts. They are habituated to expend all their revenue on their personal accommodation and ease. Their prejudices disincline them, and their ignorance disables them, from increasing their revenue by their own industry, though their avarice is eager enough to profit by the diligence of others.

Regarding the exertions of sir Aas actuated by the ordinary motive which influences mankind, that of making himself richer than he was before, he could not possibly have adopted projects more essentially conducive to that end. In the course of 20 or 30 years, he raised his revenue to an amount very nearly ten times greater than it was at first. These projects were so far preferable to any others, that their success was no less, or even much more advantageous to all those within the sphere of their operation, than to himself. His riches were not built upon the poverty of others,

but necessarily implied and caused their prosperity, and, however selfish his motive might be, he could, by no other application of his time, and talents, and money, more essentially promote the good of the whole society.

It would, however, be no small injustice to sir A, to consider the sole or even the chief motive of his conduct as a mercenary one, and the general benefit accruing from his projects as merely incidental and undesigned. On the contrary, the power and property created by his projects were deemed of no value but as they were subservient to the general good. He applied himself originally to these projects, merely because his notions of duty compelled him to employ all his faculties for the benefit of others, and the great landed proprietor is so fortunate, that he cannot benefit others so effectually as by means which at the same time most effectually secure and advance to himself the great personal goods, property and power.

The great and little vulgar have, in general, no other conception of the use of increasing wealth, than to increase the size of their dwellings, the number of their servants, the splendour and variety of their dress, furniture, and equipage. They know no other value in money, but as it can be exchanged for something that conduces to their ease, or gratifies their vanity. The income of the year is made, they think, to be expended in the year; and their selfish gratification is equally the end they have in view, whether they expend a thousand guineas in filling their halls with guests, who arrive, glitter, and disappear, between the rise and set of the same sun; in purchasing a watch or other trinket, to be worn and displayed, in scenes of gay resort, as a token of superior wealth; in maintaining a mistress, or a pack of dogs; in building a temple or obelisk in their garden, in order to improve the prospect from their windows; in covering their walls with painted canvas, or filling gilded

ministers of religion were but little enlightened themselves; their manners were coarse and rude, and their diligence more exerted to procure a livelihood than to reclaim the reprobate. Their wages were scanty and mean, and paid stintingly and grudgingly. Being a certain portion of the produce in kind, the collection was difficult and painful, and made them be considered more as wolves to devour, than as shepherds to feed, the flock. Besides, their number, though large enough for the ancient population of the district, was much too small for the rapidly increasing population.

Education was anciently conducted on a miserable plan. On the cultivated land, and the houses in the town, there was a kind of perpetual charge or tax for the support of schools. This whole tax was no more than sufficient to pay twenty pounds a year a piece to five schoolmasters, who were bound to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to boys of a certain age, whom their parents thought proper to send to them. The district seldom contained less than six or seven hundred boys of the prescribed age; a number by far too great, even if equally distributed, for five schools; but, in fact, these schools were badly attended, not only from the little esteem in which the masters were held, as from the small regard generally paid to book learning of any

sort.

These were negative evils of no small magnitude; but by far the greatest positive mischief was the excessive use of whiskey. Prescription had invested the lord of Cwith the exclusive right of distilling and vending this pernicious liquid within the precincts of his barony. As none could be legally sold or imported without his permission, all that was exposed to sale without this warrant was liable to seizure and forfeiture. The idleness and ignorance of the people naturally created an attachment to this spirit, and the interest of the lord was concerned that the greatest quantity

VOL. III. NO. XVII.

possible should be consumed, and that it should be sold at the highest price.

Various methods had been adopted by successive lords to make the most of this monopoly. The mode which indolence and rapacity would find most convenient to itself was that in which the proprietors finally adopted. The right of distilling was let out for an annual rent or payment, and a licence to sell the liquor granted on the same terms. These licences were renewable from year to year, and was naturally bestowed upon him that paid the most for it. The distiller likewise received authority to seize and confiscate, to his own use, all liquor brought into the barony, or sold within it, that came from any still but his own.

As the distiller's interest was to make the greatest possible profit of his contract, it was, of course, his business to purchase rye as cheap, and sell gin as dear, as possible. As the retailer's profit was levied upon the consumer, it was thus the common interest of the lord, the distiller, and the petty vender to encourage the passion for gin among the people, and to make the indulgence as expensive as possible.

In consequence of this system, every twentieth house in the district was a gin shop, and the passion for gin became universal. Infants of a few months old became familiar with the taste of it, and not one of a thousand of mature age was exempt from its destructive effects.

Your imagination may easily figure the endless train of evils that could not but flow from this prolific source. To shorten life, and to make it the prey of disease and imbecility while it lasts; to subvert utterly all industrious and frugal habits, and supplant them with a wild profusion and desperate indolence; to stupify the understanding into the dreary condition of idiocy; or work up the passions to madness, are the proper and unavoidable effects of a passion for gin. These effects, indeed, are less violent and 6

to rely implicitly on the representations of his agent.

The existence of so large a tract of ground as a common, was, in va

What exasperated the evil in the present case was the exorbitant price of the article. This circumstance had no effect in lessening the use of it, for this species of discouragement can never exist in a case where any price is really exorbitant, since any price is far too great for a superfluity, and where the facilities of obtaining it, and the the enticements to excess were, in other respects, so numerous and powerful.

Another evil connected with this system, was the fraud and violence to which it gave birth in the attempts of those who endeavoured to evade the law, by clandestinely importing or selling gin, and the injustice and oppression exercised by what may be termed a set of excise officers. The nature of their privilege made it necessary to invest the farmers, or monopolists, of this article with extensive and indefinite powers of entering houses and searching and arresting persons, and the abuses of this authority were innumerable.

To these evils no remedy could be expected from the lord, because his interest was supposed to be promoted by their existence, and even by their multiplication; and yet the profits of this monopoly were almost wholly intercepted by the farmers and the steward. The latter had the whole powers of the landlord, and resided on the spot, while the lord himself lived at a great distance, and was of course obliged

This circumstance considerably increased the natural asperity of the climate, and rendered it not only more uncomfortable and unwhole some to man, but also more ungenial to the soil. By making the fruits of the earth more scanty and precarious, and augmenting the necessity of shelter, clothing, and fuel, it multiplied the chances, and, at the same time, the hardships, of poverty.

The waste was really the property of the lord, but the tenants enjoyed a sort of implied privilege of turning their cattle upon it; of digging turf for family use; and gleaning from it, at pleasure, every kind of superficial product it afforded. It was the resort of a good deal of wild fowl, and some quadrupeds. These being abandoned to the tenants, afforded an irresistible temptation to hunt, and the passions for hunting and fishing united to deprave the minds of the people, and turn their attention from tillage. Foxes and other vermin found harbour among the rocks and furze, in great numbers, and the havock they committed in the poultry yards and corn fields, was no inconsiderable deduction from the profits of husbandry.

These evils, so intolerable in themselves, were occasionally carried to a most destructive pitch by the cruelty, the avarice, and the folly of those who enjoyed and abused the power of the landlord. The steward, chosen in the manner I have already described, could hard

ly fail of being a dishonest man. He was generally some unprincipled member of the law, who banished himself to this dreary spot with no other view than to enable himself, by a residence of a few years, to pass the remainder of his life in ease and luxury.

His double object, therefore, was to fleece the tenant, and to rob the lord of as much as possible. In pursuit of this end, he could not be supposed to be deterred by any kindness to the tenants, to whom he was a stranger, not only in blood, but sometimes even in language; or by any regard to the future or permanent value of the property, because he was liable to be supplanted, in a year, by a higher bidder, and all his views of profit were closed by his departure from the place. The clan entertained an affection for their native lords as strong as was their abhorrence of these base-born and mercenary representatives; the steward, had he been of himself kindly disposed towards them, could hardly fail of having all his evil passions aroused by the stupidity or hatred of this half civilized race.

The evils arising from mismanagement alone had grown to an enormous height at the time of sir A's marriage. His wife's father, the last male of his family, was a man of mild temper and great humanity; but he received what is called a learned education, and had imbibed views and inclinations widely remote from those which might have qualified him for a prudent and generous landlord. He never saw his own patrimonial domain in his life. He was born at the family mansion in London; spent his youth at Oxford; and the first use he made of his manly freedom, was to pass into France and Italy, where he spent his days and his income in collecting the monuments of ancient and modern art, with which he enriched his London cabinets and galleries.

Shortly after his father's death he was persuaded to name, for his agent at C, one Donald, who

had been brought up with him as his valet; a shrewd and artful fellow, who found it easy to inspire his master with a high opinion of his fidelity, honesty, and capacity.

This man, who supplanted his more worthy predecessor by fraud and calumny, carried with him to C some of the worst passions which degrade human nature. He was avaricious, sensual, and cruel, and not only carried every prerogative of his station to its utmost limits, but perverted every one of them to the gratification of his abominable lusts. The lord only could redress these evils, by recalling his minister, but the lord was in a distant country, and was prevented from conceiving the possibility of such enormities, not only by his confidence in his quondam valet, but by his total ignorance of all things relating to his estate, but the money it produced. He was far better acquainted with the geography of ancient Latium than with that of Scotland.

After five years residence abroad, he married an Italian lady, and brought her to his native country, where he shortly after died, leaving an infant daughter, whose guardians had their own concerns to attend to, and were qualified, by neither their situation, their interest, or their education, to make any beneficial change in the old system.

Affairs thus proceeded for upwards of twenty years, during which Donald's career was unchecked, and his tyranny uncontrouled, by his superiors. In that time, he had contrived to lessen the population of the district one-third, by those whom he banished from the district, who exiled themselves, in order to escape his vengeance or oppression, or who had come to an untimely death, by his means. The very bonds of society were, in some degree, loosened, for a little community of outlaws had insensibly been formed in the ruggedest recesses of the forest, who subsisted on the product of little fields, which they illegally took from the waste, and in the pillage of their