Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

156
KELP.
a kelp estate is a cottar; a semicottar sometimes, if the
term may be used, holding one part at least of his farm,
for the performance of a specified quantity of labour.
Where he pays no money rent at all, he is precisely a
cottar, whatever he may be termed, and exactly in that
situation which has been often said to be preferable to that
of a money tenant. In no case will the surplus produce of
these small farms enable the tenant to pay his rent from
them ; and if he cannot do that from some other source,
he must resign. If he is to find the money by labour,
he gains nothing by receiving with one hand that which
he must immediately pay back with the other. Nor
could he easily decline the kelp manufacture until some
other source of wages, some other mode or object of la-
bour in this country, is discovered. He must work when
he can obtain work, and at that which is open to him ;
as there is no choice. There can be no oppression on the
part of the landlord, because the tenant takes the farm
with his eyes open ; not with an indefinite servitude on
it, but with a fixed equivalent for a certain sum of money,
of which he is fully aware. The whole system, as far
as it is inconvenient, is the misfortune of the country, but
the fault of no one. It is the natural result of excessive
population and consequent competition ; united to that
minute division of farms which renders the existence of
a class of independent labourers impossible. If a steady
demand for labour should arise, the rate of wages in the
kelp manufacture would probably change together with
the system itself; but though the labourer in kelp might
imagine himself free, he would scarcely have the choice
of refusing the work when it was offered to him. I shall
only add to these considerations, that, under the present
circumstances, so strong is the aversion to steady labour
among the Highlanders, and so great their indolence,