Their subsistence, Mr. Laing exultingly and repeatedly points out, was derived mainly from husbandry, carried on under less favourable conditions of soil, climate, crops, and pasturage than in the Scotch highlands;-- 'but on the simple Norwegian system, to live on the produce of the land being the main object, and the labourer (the cotter) being paid chiefly in land, a good crop would be an unmingled blessing; whereas in countries where agriculture is carried on as a manufacture, a succession of good crops may glut the markets, ruin the tenant, and even reduce the money wages of the labourer. In Norway neither good nor bad crops can affect the proportion of population to the land that could in ordinary seasons subsist on it. Paying no rent, the Norwegian yeoman farmer is not usually employed in prospective improvements, but simply in raising food, so that he can see at once whether the land is sufficient to produce subsistence for himself and his labourers. If grain and potatoes for the use of the farm, and a little surplus for sale to pay the land-tax and buy luxuries with, can be raised by the farm, all the purposes of farming in Norway are answered. On the subject of pauperism, Mr. Laing alleges that 'the dread of poverty was less influential in Norway, where extreme destitution is as rare as great wealth, and where there is so much less difference in the comforts and consideration of the richer and poorer classes.' The indigent were farmed out for a week or so at a time among the yeomen farmers, 'whose poor-rate like the tithes of the Church, was too inconsiderable to mention.' The state of property, and its general diffusion throughout the social body, had also, he had no doubt, a beneficial effect on the moral condition of the people. 'The desire for wealth being considerably blunted, it was not the same actuating, engrossing principle of human action, the spring of much that was evil and immoral being thus removed.' Only one case of downright drunkenness--that of a Laplander--had come under his personal observation, and it was only on special occasions that the yeoman farmer could be seen a little elated. His theory, however (we may remark in passing), respecting the influence of property on the moral condition of the people is not supported by other facts which he quotes, namely, that owing to the restraints upon marriage, 'exercised as in Paris or London, by a high standard of living,' the 'proportion of illegitimate to legitimate children in Norway was 1 in 5,' while in a parish he specifies, it was (between 1826 and 1830) 'as high as 1 in 3-26/136.' He mentions that engagements between couples lasted generally one, two, and often several years, especially in the case of servants in husbandry waiting for a house and land to settle in as cotters. In such cases, he says, 'it too often happened that the privileged kindness between