“Not quite,” observed Mr. Mackenzie. “I can fancy a lower, though I do not ask you to receive it as fact. This letting in of wild cattle to trample the corn took place when but few wanted to be fed, and those few had immediate resources. If, instead of this act of folly, the perpetrators had waited till hundreds and thousands were in expectation, with an appetite which the most ample harvests could not satisfy, and had set fire to the produce at the very season when it was most wanted, under the idea of vexing the holders of the land, what would you say then?” “There is nothing to be said, sir, but that such would be an act of mere madness,—too evidently madness to be committed by more than an individual, and that individual an escaped maniac.” “The school of ignorance is the innermost court of Bedlam,” replied Mr. Mackenzie; “and while there are any patients remaining in it, it is possible that corn-stacks may be burned by discontented people with the notion of revenging the wrongs of the starving. But I put it only as a possibility, you know.—Can it be, Angus, that you do not see the tendency of the acts of violence that are disturbing this very district? Do you not see distress and ruin in full prospect if they are not checked, and if, moreover, the temper of the people be not directly reversed?” “Our resources are so improved that I would fain hope the best; and yet our numbers increase in full proportion, so that we had not need waste any of our capital.” “I think not indeed. I have been visiting every station on the coast and in the islands, and I find the same state of things everywhere,—a prosperity so unusual in these districts, that the people think their fortune secure for ever, while they are hastening, by every possible means, the approach of distress.” “I hope you find the farms and pastures improving with the fishery?” observed Angus.—“Everything depends upon the food keeping pace with the employment.” “The farms are improving to the utmost that skill and labour can make them improve. There is the powerful stimulus of an increasing demand, while there are increasing facilities of production. There is more manure, there are better implements, and more cattle; so that some farms produce actually double what they did when the fishery began.” Angus shook his head, observing that this was not enough. “They have done their best already in the way of increase,” said he. “They may be improved for some time to come, and to a great degree; but each improvement yields a less return: so that they will be further and further perpetually from again producing double in ten years; and all this time the consumers are increasing at a much quicker rate.” “Not double in ten years surely?” said Ella.