Emigration from the Highlands to America seems to have fairly commenced shortly after 1760, as, in a pamphlet[57] published in 1784, it is stated that between the years 1763 and 1775 above 20,000 Highlanders left their homes to settle on the other side of the Atlantic. The first apparently to suffer from the altered state of things in the Highlands, the decreasing value of men and the increasing value of money, were the tacksmen, or large farmers, the relations of the old chiefs, who had held their farms from generation to generation, who regarded themselves as having about as much right to the land as the lairds, and who had hitherto been but little troubled about rent. After a time, when the chiefs, now merely lairds, began to realise their new position and to feel the necessity of making their land yield them as large an income as possible, they very naturally sought to get a higher rent for the farms let to these tacksmen, who, in most cases, were the only immediate holders of land from the proprietor. These tacksmen, in many cases, appear to have resented this procedure as they would a personal injury from their dearest friends. It was not that the addition to the rents was excessive, or that the rents were already as high as the land could bear, for generally the additions seem to have been trifling, and it is well known that the proprietors received nothing like the rents their lands should have yielded under a proper system of management. What seems to have hurt these gentlemen was the idea that the laird, the father of his people, should ever think of anything so mercenary as rent, or should ever by any exercise of his authority indicate that he had it in his power to give or let his farms to the highest bidders. It was bad enough, they thought, that an alien government should interfere with their old ways of doing; but that their chiefs, the heads of their race, for whom they were ready to lay down their lives and the lives of all over whom they had any power, should turn against them, was more than they could bear. The consequence was that many of them, especially in the west, threw up their farms, no doubt thinking that the lairds would at once ask them to remain on the old terms. This, however, was but seldom done, and the consequence was that many of these tacksmen emigrated to America, taking with them, no doubt, servants and sub-tenants, and enticing out more by the glowing accounts they sent home of their good fortune in that far-off land.