the Progress of Labour
shall be truly reached.

But is it not just one of the essential disadvantages attending the
contract system, or may we rather call it the system of weekly hire,
that while it prompts the employer to frugality, by the obvious
benefits to him of constant accumulation, it leaves the employed, as a
mass, without a sufficient motive to the same virtue, and thus insures
their being retained in that unprovidedness which forbids independence
and true social dignity? On this point, were we a workman, we should
be sorry to rest in an affirmative, or to allow it to slacken our
exertions or sap our self-denial; because if there is a higher
development of the labouring state in store for society, it can only
be attained by the more speedy perfection of the contract state in
_the entire independence of the workman_. The writer from whom we have
quoted thinks, and with his sentiments we entirely concur, that
'society, in its progress towards an ideal state, may have to undergo
modifications, compared with which all previous ones will seem
trifling and superficial. Of one thing only can we feel
secure--namely, that the loyal and punctual discharge of all the
obligations arising out of existing social relations will best hallow,
beautify, and elevate those relations, if they are destined to be
permanent; and will best prepare a peaceful and beneficent advent for
their successors, if, like so much that in its day seemed eternal,
they too are doomed to pass away.'

ANECDOTE OF THE FIELD OF SHERRIFMUIR.

My grandfather, William Wilson, was born in the farmhouse of Drumbrae,
on the estate of Airthrey, at no great distance from the field of
Sherrifmuir. At the rebellion of 1715, he was a lad of fifteen years
of age, and learning that the rebels under the Earl of Mar had met
with the royal forces under the Duke of Argyle in the neighbourhood,
on the morning of Sunday the 12th November, while it was still dusk,
he went to the top of a neighbouring hill named Glentye, from which
the whole of the moor was discernible, and on which a number of
country people were stationed, attracted to the spot, like himself, by
curiosity. Being at no great distance from both armies, he could see
them distinctly. The Highlanders, who observed no regular order, he
compared to a large, dark, formless cloud, forming a striking contrast
to the regular lines and disciplined appearance of the royal army.
After observing them for so