Excerpt from The Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws: An Historico-Economical Enquiry Called forth a protest from one of' the greatest economists and historians of the continent. I walked down the Whole length of Strathnaver, from its desolate southern end to its northern declivity, where the extruded peasantry some seventy years ago had been huddled down to the coast; and I composed on the spot the ballad of 'bonnie Strathnaver, ' published in the 'scotsman' newspaper, which I was happy to be informed from various quarters had been largely circulated in Sutherlandshire, and had been the means of dropping some kindly balm of human sympathy into the bleeding wounds of the mis-used peasantry. The investigation thus commenced into the rural economics of the Highlands, was continued year after year, till there remained scarcely a district which I had not visited, and where I had not ascertained, with the witness of my own eyes, both the lamentable effects of general mismanagement, and the good results of exceptional wise administration. Further, in pursuing these inquiries, it soon became manifest to me, that the special evils under which the Highlanders groaned were no isolated phenomenon, but were merely the natural result of a general one-sided and unjust body of Land Laws; of which the operation in the remote Highlands, as in Ireland, had been intensified by local peculiarities. I was accordingly forced to widen the sphere of my. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.