4. Another obvious and incalculable boon will be conferred on the country, if we can bridge over the chasm that has hitherto divided the Highlands and Islands from the labour markets of the south. It was indeed a strange anomaly, that strong men should be lying down to die in the Isles, or even on the mainland of Scotland, and that within two or three hundred miles of their homes, and on Scottish soil, there should be a want of labourers, and the easy means of earning ample wages. This appears to us one of the great objects to be now consulted, and to which the attention of the Board has already been anxiously directed: to remove the obstacles that have existed to a free intercourse between different parts of the country, and more particularly between the Saxon and Celtic districts. There are many causes that combine to fix a Highlander to his home, even in the midst of misery. Among these are ignorance of better things, and that strangeness and helplessness, produced by a change of scene, which half-civilised men are apt to feel with almost the timidity of children. The diversity of the Highland and the Lowland tongue is another impediment, but one which is daily disappearing, and is never so likely to vanish as under the pressure of necessity. The very virtues of the Highland character contribute to keep them where they are, and are assisted in doing so by some of those defects which are akin to their good qualities. Their patient endurance of cold and privation cooperates with the congenial tendency towards indolence, to fix them in a state of miserable inaction, rather than submit to the active exertion that would increase their comforts. Every thing will now combine to overcome these difficulties; the _res angusta domi_ will now be vividly felt, if it can ever be felt at all; while fortunately both the benevolence and the necessities, both the wishes and the interests of their Lowland neighbours, concur in desiring that a new supply should be obtained from that quarter, in aid of what the south itself affords. Not only railways now forming, but also the great amount of draining operations contemplated, or already in progress under recent enactments, must tend in an eminent degree to alleviate the sufferings of the distressed districts, if a free current of labour can be established, so as to redress the inequalities prevailing in different places. The labour market may not be so favourable this year as it was last, but it will still, we hope, be sufficiently so for this purpose.