nd all had to be set right,--a sort of
Russia on a small scale, that had just got another Peter the Great to
civilise it,--or a sort of barbarous Egypt, with an energetic Ali
Pasha at its head. Even the vast wealth and great liberality of the
Stafford family militated against this hapless county: it enabled them
to treat it as the mere subject of an interesting experiment, in which
gain to themselves was really no object,--nearly as little so as if
they had resolved on dissecting a dog alive for the benefit of
science. It was a still further disadvantage, that they had to carry
on their experiment by the hands, and to watch its first effects with
the eyes, of others. The agonies of the dog might have had their
softening influence on a dissector who held the knife himself; but
there could be no such influence exerted over him, did he merely issue
orders to his footman that the dissection should be completed,
remaining himself, meanwhile, out of sight and out of hearing. The
plan of improvement sketched out by his English family was a plan
exceedingly easy of conception. Here is a vast tract of land,
furnished with two distinct sources of wealth. Its shores may be made
the seats of extensive fisheries, and the whole of its interior
parcelled out into productive sheep-farms. All is waste in its present
state: it has no fisheries, and two-thirds of its internal produce is
consumed by the inhabitants. It had contributed, for the use of the
community and the landlord, its large herds of black cattle; but the
English family saw, and, we believe, saw truly, that for every one
pound of beef which it produced, it could be made to produce two
pounds of mutton, and perhaps a pound of fish in addition. And it was
resolved, therefore, that the inhabitants of the central districts,
who, _as they were mere Celts_, could not be transformed, it was held,
into store-farmers, should be marched down to the sea-side, there to
convert themselves into fishermen, on the shortest possible notice,
and that a few farmers of capital, of the industrious Lowland race,
should be invited to occupy the new subdivisions of the interior.

And, pray, what objections can be urged against so liberal and
large-minded a scheme? The poor inhabitants of the interior had _very_
serious objections to urge against it. Their humble dwellings were of
their own rearing; it was they themselves who had broken in their
little fields from the waste; from time immemorial,