Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

158 KELP.
labour. Admitting that such a practice did exist among-
those, who, as the matter stands, are the proprietors both
of the sea and the land, they would, even then, be acting
on a system to which they are not only compelled by
the state of the country, but which is admitted to be
the most benevolent that it is in their power to adopt. If
the increasing population, always competing for land, is
not accommodated by dividing farms as far as they will
bear, it must emigrate or starve. These farms can be
divided no lower than to admit of maintaining a family,
unless some contingent occupation is added. On the sea
shores, this is effected by the fishery: it is equally ef-
fected by the kelp manufacture, which supplies the means
with the wages, of that labour, the want of a demand for
which is the great source of the poverty of the High-
lands. Thus these very politicians who, with their other
contradictory systems of improvements, are perpetually
demanding the establishment of woollen manufactures or
of cotton manufactures, as an effectual means of better-
ing this country, are equally clamorous for the abolition
of the only one they already possess ; one which is as
natural and necessary as it is profitable, and which re-
quires neither capital nor change of habits or residence.
It is precisely one of those contingent manufactures to
which it would be desirable to add ; as the only ones
adapted to a population which is but half occupied
which is, and will always and inevitably be imperfectly
employed in agriculture, I need scarcely add that it is
also a harvest, offered by nature and only requiring to be
reaped. That policy would be an extraordinary one
which should refuse to work a coal mine because a col-
liery is a dangerous and a dirty occupation.
But if the proprietors were not thus compelled, by
the natural course of events, to accumulate a population
;