Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847.

by Various

It is almost needless to ask the question, whether the operations of the Relief Board are still necessary. Every one acquainted with the Highlands and Islands is aware that the results of last year's failure of the potato are still at work, and must necessarily prolong the distress for some time to come. The fund which has been subscribed for the relief of that distress must necessarily, therefore, be employed in its legitimate and destined purpose, until that purpose be accomplished or the fund exhausted. Independently of any blight in the present potato crop, great distress will arise from the limited breadth of potatoes that has been planted, and from the fact that the cottars, who, in other years, were allowed ground to plant potatoes for themselves, have been deprived of that resource, from the necessity of retaining the whole arable farms for the direct use of the tenants and crofters. It is believed, also, that the corn crops of this year, though highly favourable in the lower parts of the country, have neither been so early nor so productive in the Islands as was at one time expected.

It is, therefore, with perfect propriety and justice that the Board have determined to retain the balance in their hands, in the mean time, as a sacred deposit for the relief of that continued distress, which both the reports of their own inspectors, and the information of the government officers, establish to be still prevalent. On this point the late report of Sir John F. Burgoyne as to Ireland applies in a smaller degree to a very great part of the Highlands and Islands.

In continuing the system of relief, however, the board must keep in view more closely and constantly than ever the leading principles which originally guided them, and which we believe to be founded on the most solid grounds of humanity and social policy.

1. Nothing must be done to relieve of their legal obligations those who are bound by law to support the infirm poor. Wherever a poor law is established, it must, we conceive, be fully and fairly enforced against those liable in relief, to the extent of what is imposed upon them. In no other way will selfish or thoughtless men be taught a due interest in the social condition of their neighbours, and make the necessary exertion to raise or preserve them from a state of pauperism, the effects of which they are themselves to feel in their only sensitive part.

2. It must be a rule, all but inflexible, that the able-bodied, receiving relief, shall give, at the time, or engage to give afterwards, a corresponding amount of labour in return; and that engagement must be strictly enforced. This rule is not necessary merely for the purpose of economising the fund, and benefiting the public by useful employment. It is essential

for preserving the destitute both from the feeling, and from the reality, of that degradation which attends on eating the bread of idleness. We believe that much mischief was done, in 1837, by exonerating those who had obtained aid from the obligations of labour which they had undertaken, and which we know, in some districts, broke down all the restraints of self-respect, and implanted a spirit of dependence and mendicity, even in persons of a decent station. The evils of famine itself are great,—its moral no less than its physical effects are fearfully destructive. But the injury done is hardly less when the poor are deprived, by gratuitous and reckless largesses, of those habits of industry, independence, and self-respect, which are their best possessions, and their only means of rightly bearing their lot or raising themselves in the scale of existence.

3. A peculiar portion of the population, consisting chiefly of solitary females unfit for active employment, and yet not sufficiently disabled to be objects of parochial aid, will require a humane and indulgent consideration. The Committees hitherto seem to have advanced them little stores of wool and flax, to enable them to give some return for their support; and a great deal of meritorious exertion has in this way been fostered. We presume that at least to a certain extent this humane system may be continued.

4. Another obvious and incalculable boon will be conferred on the country, if we can bridge over the chasm that has hitherto divided the Highlands and Islands from the labour markets of the south. It was indeed a strange anomaly, that strong men should be lying down to die in the Isles, or even on the mainland of Scotland, and that within two or three hundred miles of their homes, and on Scottish soil, there should be a want of labourers, and the easy means of earning ample wages. This appears to us one of the great objects to be now consulted, and to which the attention of the Board has already been anxiously directed: to remove the obstacles that have existed to a free intercourse between different parts of the country, and more particularly between the Saxon and Celtic districts. There are many causes that combine to fix a Highlander to his home, even in the midst of misery. Among these are ignorance of better things, and that strangeness and helplessness, produced by a change of scene, which half-civilised men are apt to feel with almost the timidity of children. The diversity of the Highland and the Lowland tongue is another impediment, but one which is daily disappearing, and is never so likely to vanish as under the pressure of necessity. The very virtues of the Highland character contribute to keep them where they are, and are assisted in doing so by some of those defects which are akin to their good qualities. Their patient endurance of cold and privation cooperates with the congenial tendency towards indolence, to fix them in a state of miserable inaction, rather than submit to the active exertion that would increase their comforts. Every thing will now combine to overcome these difficulties; the res angusta domi will now be vividly felt, if it can ever be felt at all; while fortunately both the benevolence and the necessities, both the wishes and the interests of their Lowland neighbours, concur in desiring that a new supply should be obtained from that quarter, in aid of what the south itself affords. Not only railways now forming, but also the great amount of draining operations contemplated, or already in progress under recent enactments, must tend in an eminent degree to alleviate the sufferings of the distressed districts, if a free current of labour can be established, so as to redress the inequalities prevailing in different places. The labour market may not be so favourable this year as it was last, but it will still, we hope, be sufficiently so for this purpose.

We have a strong impression that a change of this kind, if prudently brought about without deranging local agriculture, will of itself do a great deal for the permanent relief of those localities where distress now prevails. Labourers thus obtained may in some respects be inferior, from want of skill, and even from want of strength. But our Highland countrymen have recommendations in their sober and orderly habits, which are not to be found in some of their competitors in

the labour-market. Even railway contractors, though not likely to be swayed, except by economical views, are beginning to tire of the scenes of disorder and disturbance too frequently exhibited by workmen from other quarters. If the natives of the Scottish Highlands can be fairly roused to exertion, at a distance from home, their characters will be improved, and their views enlarged. They will begin to taste the benefits of better subsistence, and of some command of money; and their frugal habits, as well as their kindly affections, will communicate the advantage and spread the example among their suffering countrymen whom they have left behind.