would model, and whose evils they would remedy.

Nothing is less difficult than to procure one convenience by the
forfeiture of another. A soldier may expedite his march by throwing away
his arms. To banish the Tacksman is easy, to make a country plentiful by
diminishing the people, is an expeditious mode of husbandry; but little
abundance, which there is nobody to enjoy, contributes little to human
happiness.

As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of
intelligence must direct the man of labour. If the Tacksmen be taken
away, the Hebrides must in their present state be given up to grossness
and ignorance; the tenant, for want of instruction, will be unskilful,
and for want of admonition will be negligent. The Laird in these wide
estates, which often consist of islands remote from one another, cannot
extend his personal influence to all his tenants; and the steward having
no dignity annexed to his character, can have little authority among men
taught to pay reverence only to birth, and who regard the Tacksman as
their hereditary superior; nor can the steward have equal zeal for the
prosperity of an estate profitable only to the Laird, with the Tacksman,
who has the Laird's income involved in his own.

The only gentlemen in the Islands are the Lairds, the Tacksmen, and the
Ministers, who frequently improve their livings by becoming farmers. If
the Tacksmen be banished, who will be left to impart knowledge, or
impress civility? The Laird must always be at a distance from the
greater part of his lands; and if he resides at all upon them, must drag
his days in solitude, having no longer either a friend or a companion; he
will therefore depart to some more comfortable residence, and leave the
tenants to the wisdom and mercy of a factor.

Of tenants there are different orders, as they have greater or less
stock. Land is sometimes leased to a small fellowship, who live in a
cluster of huts, called a Tenants Town, and are bound jointly and
separately for the payment of their rent. These, I believe, employ in
the care of their cattle, and the labour of tillage, a kind of tenants
yet lower; who having a hut with grass for a certain number of cows and
sheep, pay their rent by a stipulated quantity of labour.

The condition of domestick servants, or the price of occasional labour, I
do not know with certainty. I was told that the maids have sheep, and
are allowed to spin for their own clothing;