hus England has for several years been filled with the atchievements of
seventy thousand Highlanders employed in America. I have heard from an
English officer, not much inclined to favour them, that their behaviour
deserved a very high degree of military praise; but their number has been
much exaggerated. One of the ministers told me, that seventy thousand
men could not have been found in all the Highlands, and that more than
twelve thousand never took the field. Those that went to the American
war, went to destruction. Of the old Highland regiment, consisting of
twelve hundred, only seventy-six survived to see their country again.

The Gothick swarms have at least been multiplied with equal liberality.
That they bore no great proportion to the inhabitants, in whose countries
they settled, is plain from the paucity of northern words now found in
the provincial languages. Their country was not deserted for want of
room, because it was covered with forests of vast extent; and the first
effect of plenitude of inhabitants is the destruction of wood. As the
Europeans spread over America the lands are gradually laid naked.

I would not be understood to say, that necessity had never any part in
their expeditions. A nation, whose agriculture is scanty or unskilful,
may be driven out by famine. A nation of hunters may have exhausted
their game. I only affirm that the northern regions were not, when their
irruptions subdued the Romans, overpeopled with regard to their real
extent of territory, and power of fertility. In a country fully
inhabited, however afterward laid waste, evident marks will remain of its
former populousness. But of Scandinavia and Germany, nothing is known
but that as we trace their state upwards into antiquity, their woods were
greater, and their cultivated ground was less.

That causes were different from want of room may produce a general
disposition to seek another country is apparent from the present conduct
of the Highlanders, who are in some places ready to threaten a total
secession. The numbers which have already gone, though like other
numbers they may be magnified, are very great, and such as if they had
gone together and agreed upon any certain settlement, might have founded
an independent government in the depths of the western continent. Nor
are they only the lowest and most indigent; many men of considerable
wealth have taken with them their train of labourers and dependants; and