han a king to expel from his country the
inhabitants of his kingdom.' 'Now, the Gaelic tenant,' continues the
Frenchman, 'has never been conquered; nor did he forfeit, on any after
occasion, the rights which he originally possessed;'--in point of
right, he is still a co-proprietor with his captain. To a Scotchman
acquainted with the law of property as it has existed among us, in
even the Highlands, for the last century, and everywhere else for at
least two centuries more, the view may seem extreme; not so, however,
to a native of the Continent, in many parts of which prescription and
custom are found ranged, not on the side of the chief, but on that of
the vassal. 'Switzerland,' says Sismondi, 'which in so many respects
resembles Scotland--in its lakes--its mountains--its climate--and the
character, manners, and habits of its children--was likewise at the
same period parcelled out among a small number of lords. If the Counts
of Kyburgh, of Lentzburg, of Hapsburg, and of Gruyeres, had been
protected by the English laws, they would find themselves at the
present day precisely in the condition in which the Earls of
Sutherland were twenty years ago. Some of them would perhaps have had
the same taste for _improvements_, and several republics would have
been expelled from the Alps, to make room for flocks of sheep.' 'But
while the law has given to the Swiss peasant a guarantee of
perpetuity, it is to the Scottish laird that it has extended this
guarantee in the British empire, leaving the peasant in a precarious
situation.' 'The clan--recognised at first by the captain, whom they
followed in war and obeyed for their common advantage, as his friends
and relations, then as his soldiers, then as his vassals, then as his
farmers--he has come finally to regard as hired labourers, whom he may
perchance allow to remain on the soil of their common country for his
own advantage, but whom he has the power to expel so soon as he no
longer finds it for his interest to keep them.'

Arguments like those of Sismondi, however much their force may be felt
on the Continent, could be formidable at home, as we have said, in
only a time of revolution, when the very foundations of society would
be unfixed, and opinion set loose, to pull down or reconstruct at
pleasure. But it is surely not uninteresting to mark how, in the
course of events, that very law of England which, in the view of the
Frenchman, has done the Highland peasant so much less, an