runs of ill luck by their temporary successes! And if such be the case among our hereditary fishermen of the north, who derive more than half their sustenance from the white fishery, how much more must it affect those fishermen of Sutherland, who, having no market for their white fish in the depopulated interior, and no merchants settled among them to find markets farther away, have to depend exclusively on their herring fishing! The experiment which precipitated the population of the country on its barer skirts, as some diseases precipitate the humours on the extremities, would have been emphatically a disastrous one, so far at least as the people were concerned, even did it involve no large amount of human suffering, and no deterioration of character. One of the first writers, of unquestioned respectability, who acquainted the public with the true character of the revolution which had been effected in Sutherland, was the late General Stewart of Garth. He was, we believe, the first man--and the fact says something for his shrewdness--who saw a coming poor-law looming through the _clearing_ of Sutherland. His statements are exceedingly valuable; his inferences almost always just. The General--a man of probity and nice honour--had such an ability of estimating the value of moral excellence in a people, as the originators of the revolution had of estimating the antagonist merits of double pounds of mutton and single pounds of beef. He had seen printed representations on the subject--tissues of hollow falsehood, that have since been repeated in newspapers and reviews; and though unacquainted with the facts at the time, he saw sufficient reason to question their general correctness, from the circumstance that he found in them the character of the people, with which no man could be better acquainted, vilified and traduced. The General saw one leviathan falsehood running through the whole, and, on the strength of the old adage, naturally suspected the company in which he found it. And so, making minute and faithful inquiry, he published the results at which he arrived. He refers to the mode of ejectment by the torch. He next goes on to show how some of the ejected tenants were allowed small allotments of moor on the coast side, of from half an acre to two acres in extent, which it was their task to break into corn land; and how that, because many patches of green appear in this way, where all was russet before, the change has been much eulogized as improvement. We find him remarking further, with considerable point and shrewdness, that 'many persons are, however, inclined to doubt the advantages of improvements which call for such frequent apologies,' and that, 'if the advantage to the people were so evident, or if more lenient measures had been pursued, vindication could not have been necessary.' The General knew how to pass from the green spots themselves to the condition of those who tilled them.