Diana Gabaldon. The drums of autumn. Book 2. Mysteries of the past (№ 431910)

... He was well aware of cases when families reached such a degree of despair that they chose separation and slavery in exchange for a chance to survive. he knew all about the sale of allotments, when poor tenants were forced to leave the land that had belonged to their ancestors for several hundred years, about the dire poverty and hunger that reigned in the cities, about the unbearable life that ordinary Scots dragged out in those years. However, reading in books and seeing with your own eyes are completely different things.