In some countries you find every farm-house surrounded with small huts, possessed by numbers of people, supposed to be useful to the farmer. These in Scotland are called cottars, (cottagers) because they live in cottages. If you consider them in a political light, they will appear to be inhabitants appropriated for agriculture. In one sense they are so, if by that you understand the gathering in of the fruits; in another they are not, if by agriculture you understand the turning up the surface. I bring in this example, and shall enlarge a little upon it, because I imagine it to be, less or more, the picture of Europe 400 years ago. The Scotch farmer must have hands to gather in a scanty produce, spread over a large extent of ground. He has six cottars, I shall suppose; but these cottars must have wives, and these wives will have children, and all must be fed before the master’s rent can be paid. It never comes into the cottar’s head to suppose that his children can gain money by their labour; the farmer never supposes that it is possible for him to pay his rent without the assistance of his cottars to tend his cattle, and gather in his crop; and the master cannot go against the custom of the country, without laying his land waste. All these children are ready at the farmer’s disposal; he can, without any expence, send what parcels of sheep he pleases, to different distances of half a mile or more, to feed upon spots of ground which, without the conveniency of these children, would be entirely lost. By this plan of farming, landlords who have a great extent of country which they are not able to improve, can let the whole in a very few farms, and at the same time all the spontaneous produce of the earth is gathered in and consumed. If you compare the rent of these lands with the extent, it appears very small; if you compare it with the numbers fed upon the farm, you will find that an estate in the highlands maintains, perhaps, ten times as many people as another of the same value in a good and fertile province. Thus it is in some estates as in some convents of the begging order, the more mouths the better cheer.