n; but no attempt had
apparently been made by anyone to state by reference to extant official
documents what the total of the alleged decline had been, or whether or
why in some districts it had been greater or less than in others. The
two voluminous works known respectively as the _Old_ and _New
Statistical Accounts of Scotland_ were full of significant, but wholly
undigested details. How should I succeed where so many others had
failed? Where should I find records which would enable me to complete
incompleteness and reduce chaos to some comprehensive order? One
afternoon, when I found myself alone in the house, I was thinking these
things over in one of the silent libraries, and staring again at the
backs of books I had already opened, when, purely out of curiosity, I
dragged at hazard a large and dusty volume from a row of folios which I
had neglected, supposing them to be all atlases. I found that, instead
of an atlas, the volume I had extracted was a copy of the huge
Government Report which is commonly known by the name of _The New
Domesday Book_. I had heard of this work before, but had never till now
seen it, nor had I realized the nature of its contents. _The New
Domesday Book_ was the result of an official inquiry undertaken some ten
years previously into the number, the extent, and the rental value of
all the landed properties of Great Britain and Ireland. Here, I thought,
was at least a large installment of the kind of evidence of which I had
felt the want, and during the rest of my visit to Ardverikie I devoted
every possible moment to a study of this volume.

Without going into details, it will be enough to mention the broad and
unmistakable facts which _The New Domesday Book_ disclosed, and which
formed a direct counterblast, not to the oratory of the Highland
agitators only, but also to the wider assertions of Henry George and of
Bright. Henry George, whose statistical knowledge was a blank, had
contented himself with enunciating the vague doctrine that in all modern
countries--the United States, for example, and more especially the
United Kingdom--every increase of wealth was in the form of rent,
appropriated by the owners of the soil, most of whom were millionaires
already, or were very quickly becoming so. Bright, in dealing with this
country, had committed himself to a statement which was very much more
specific. The number of persons, he said, who had any interest as owners
in the soil of their mothe