"Yet this disposition among the Highlanders has been greatly exaggerated.
"Where it is most offensive, it is amongst those who have been most impoverished and neglected.
"The inquiries of the agents of the Relief Committees, as well as those of the Royal Commissioners on the Poor Laws, have proved,—
"1. That there has been a great deficiency in the application of capital and skill to develop the resources of the Highlands and Islands.
"2. That the skilful application, even of a moderate capital, to various undertakings requiring labour, opens a prospect of great improvement in the country. These resources existing, the inference is inevitable, that if the higher ranks in the Highlands are bound to support their poor, they can and will, in general, find "remunerative employment" for them rather than maintain them in idleness.
"And the observations of the agents of the Committees, dispensing a voluntary fund, but guarding it—as a well-regulated relief would be guarded,—by the 'Labour Test' therefore affording an earnest of what maybe expected from the habitual operation of such a Law,—have shewn that, under its influence, the 'aboriginal idleness' of the Highlanders rapidly disappears.
"The principle that an effective legal provision against all kinds of destitution is useful to a country, as a wholesome stimulus both to capitalists and labourers, is clearly stated by Sir Robert Peel, and now recognised and acted on in reference to Ireland.
"The evidence of the resources of Ireland, in the absence of that stimulus, having been very imperfectly developed,—from the Report of the Committee on the occupation of lands, and other sources,—is just similar to that in the Highlands.
"And the effect of an incipient Poor-Rate in forcing on profitable improvements, as well as in equalising the burden imposed on the higher ranks by the destitution of the lower, begins to show itself in Ireland unequivocally.
"There are probably some districts both in the Highlands and in Ireland, where 'profitable investments of labour' cannot be found, which can only be effectually relieved by emigration and colonisation.