scarcely less severe than those occasioned by the policy of the Norman kings. Deer have received extended ranges, while men have been hunted within a narrower and still narrower circle. . . . One after one the liberties of the people have been cloven down. . . . And the oppressions are daily on the increase. . . . The clearance and dispersion of the people is pursued by the proprietors as a settled principle, as an agricultural necessity, just as trees and brushwood are cleared from the wastes of America or Australia; and the operation goes on in a quiet, business-like way, &c."[1]
- ↑ {{subst:al|Robert Somers}}: Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847, London 1848, pp. 12-. passim. These letters originally appeared in the "Times." The English economists of course explained the famine of the Gaels in 1847, by their overpopulation, at all events, they "were pressing on their food-supply." The "clearing of estates," or as it is called in Germany "Bauernlegen," occurred in Germany especially after the 20 years' war, and led to peasant-revolts as late as 1790 in Kursachsen. It obtained especially in East Germany. In most of the Prussian provinces, Frederick II. for the first time secured right of property for the peasants. After the conquest of Silesia he forced the landlords to rebuild the huts, barns, etc., and to provide the peasants with cattle and implements. He wanted soldiers for his army and tax-payers for his treasury. For the rest, the pleasant life that the peasant led under Frederick's system of finance and hodge-podge rule of despotism, bureaucracy and feudalism, may be seen from the following quotation from his admirer, Mirabeau: "Le lin fait donc une des grandes richesses du cultivateur dans le Nord de l'Allemagne. Malheureusement pour l'espéce humaine, ce n'est qu'une ressource contre la misère et non un moyen de bieu-être. Les impôts directs, les corvées, les servitudes de tout genre, écrasent le cultivateur allemand, qui paie encore des impôts indirects dans tout ce qu'il achète . . . et poure comble de ruine, il n'ose pas vendre ses productions où et comme il le veut; il n'ose pas achter ce dont il a besoin aux marchands qui pourraient le lui livrer au meilleur prix. Toutes ces causes le ruineut insensiblement, et il se trouverait hors d'état de payer les impôts directs à l'échéance sans la filerie; elle lui offre une ressource, en occupant utilement sa femme, les enfants, ses servants, ses valets, et lui-même; mais quelle péuihle vie, même aidée de ce secours. En été, il travaille comme un forcat au lahourage et à la récolte; il se couche à 9 heures et se lève à deux, pour suffire aux travaux; en hiver il devrait réparer ses forces par un plus grand repos; mais il manquera de grains pour le pain et les semailles, s'il se défait des denrécs qu'il faudrait vendre pour payer les impôts. Il faut donc filer pour suppléer à ce vide . . . il faut y apporter la plus grande assiduité. Aussi le paysan se couche-t-il en hiver à minuit, une heure, et se lève à cinq ou six; ou bien il se couche à neuf, et se lève à deux, et cela tous les jours de la vie si ce n'est le dimanche. Ces excès de veille et de travail usent la nature humaine, et de là vient qu' hommes et femmes vieillissent beaucoup plûtôt dans les campagnes que dans les villes. (Mirabeau, l. c. t. 1II., pp. 212 sqq.)
Note to the second edition. In April 1866, 18 years after the publication of the work of Robert Somers quoted above, Professor Leone Levi gave a lecture before the Society of Arts on the transformation of sheep walks into deer-forests, in which he depicts the advance in the devastation of the Scottish Highlands. "He says, with other things: "Depopulation and transformation into sheep-walks were the most convenient means for getting an income without expenditure. . . . A deer forest in place of a sheep-walk was a common change in the Highlands. The landowners turned out the sheep as they once turned out the men from their estates, and wel-
