r. Robertson relates both
the peculiar circumstances in which it has been issued, and the
feelings which it has excited. We find from his testimony, that the
old state of things which is so immediately on the eve of being broken
up in this locality, lacked not a few of those sources of terror to
the proprietary of the country, that are becoming so very formidable
to them in the newer states. A spectral poor-law sits by our waysides,
wrapped up in death-flannels of the English cut, and shakes its skinny
hand at the mansion-houses of our landlords,--vision beyond comparison
more direfully portentous than the apparition seen by the lone
shepherd of Strathcarron. But in the Highlands, at least, it is merely
the landlord of the new and improved state of things--the landlord of
widespread clearings and stringent removal-summonses--that it
threatens. The existing poor-law in Glencalvie is a self-enforcing
law, that rises direct out of the unsophisticated sympathies of the
Highland heart, and costs the proprietary nothing. 'The constitution
of society in the glen,' says Mr. Robertson, 'is remarkably simple.
Four heads of families are bound for the whole rental of L55, 13s. a
year; the number of souls is about ninety. Sixteen cottages pay rent;
three cottages are occupied by old lone women, who pay no rent, and
who have a grace from the others for the grazing of a few goats or
sheep, by which they live. This self-working poor-law system,' adds
Mr. Robertson, 'is supported by the people themselves; the laird, I am
informed, never gives anything to it.' Now there must be at least some
modicum of good in such a state of things, however old-fashioned; and
we are pretty sure such of our English neighbours as leave their acres
untilled year after year, to avoid the crushing pressure of the
statute-enforced poor-law that renders them not worth the tilling,
would be somewhat unwilling, were the state made theirs, to improve it
away. Nor does it seem a state--with all its simplicity, and all its
perhaps blameable indifferency to modern improvement--particularly
hostile to the development of mind or the growth of morals. 'The
people of Amat and Glencalvie themselves supported a teacher for the
education of their children,' says Mr. Robertson. 'The laird,' he
adds, 'has never lost a farthing of rent. In bad years, such as 1836
or 1837, the people may have required the favour of a few weeks'
delay, but they are now not a single farthing in a