life; for them it was the introduction to a future which had a sun
in it, rayful and radiant with the beams of hope and promise. Let
those who denounce and deplore this harsh unpeopling come and stand
upon the cold, bleak summit of one of these Sutherland mountains.
Let them bring their compasses, or some other instrument for
measuring the angles, sines and cosines of human conditions. Plant
your theodolite here; wipe the telescope's eye with your
handkerchief; look your keenest in the line of the lineage of these
evicted thousands. Steady, now! while the most tranquil light of
the future is on the pathway of your eye. This first reach of your
vision is the life-track of the fathers and mothers unhoused among
these mountains. Look on beyond, over the longer life-line of their
children; then farther still under the horizon of the remotest
future to the track of their childrens' children. Can you make an
angle of a single degree's subtension in the hereditary conditions
of these generations, or a dozen beyond? Can you detect a point of
departure by which the second generation would have diverged from
the first, or the third from the second, and have attained to a
higher life of comfort, intelligence, social and political position
had they remained in these mountain cottages, grubbed on their
cottage farms, and lived from hand to mouth on stinted rations of
oatmeal and potatoes, as their ancestors had done from time
immemorial? Can you see among all the hopeful possibilities of
Time's tomorrows, any such change for the better? You can sight no
such prospect with your telescope in that direction. Turn it around
and sweep the horizon of that other condition into which they were
thrust, weeping and wrathful against their will. Follow them across
the Atlantic to North America, to their homes in the States and in
the Canadas. Measure the angle they made in this transposition, and
the latitude and longitude of social and moral life they have