Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

314 NOUTH RON A.
woefully : the North Ronenses found no difficulty, al-
though Malthus had not in those days become an object
of attack for those who began by not comprehending him,
subsided in not believing him, and ended in teaching
him what he had been labouring so hardly and so long to
teach them. The children were equally divided among
all the families ; and when the number exceeded thirty,
the surplus was sent ofiF to Lewis, to Seaforth, the pro-
prietor and chief. It is not stated exactly how an event-
ual deficiency was made up ; but it must be supposed
that the deal board with the two stones was an agent in
this part of the business. The whole system is well de-
serving of commentaries, which, in these happy days,
when political economy and population are taught to
young masters and misses by question and answer, I
need not waste on it. I may only add, with respect to
the ancient political constitution of North Rona, that as
Sir George calls it a commonwealth in one place, and
then mentions that there was a Chief, it was probably a
sort of federal republic, like America, or else resembled
the Republic of Rome under Nero, or that of France
under the First Consul ; or, what is still more likely,
some of the constitutions of Jeremy Bentham, or the
Abbe Sieyes.
I am grieved to impeach the veracity of Kenneth
Mac Cagie's tradition ; but the decline and fall of the
Empire, or Commonwealth, of Rona, must be attributed
to the following causes, on Martin's credit. The pen of
Montesquieu would have been required to do justice to
the subject.
In the year 1686, the rats arrived in such abundance
that they ate up all the corn ; and, as misfortunes never
come single, some seamen landed and stole the bull.
The cows, upon this, very properly, refused to give milk;
and, as if the fall of Rona had been inevitably decreed,