8S View of the Situation of Farmers^ ^c. Nov, 



indulgence. Search me well, decompound me, criticife me as 

 fevercly as you can, and, with all your might, * try from the ivrit' 

 irigs to f fid the luriter cut, ' 



In the courfe of thefe little fkctches, the critical reader, no 

 doubt, will difcovcr fuch llrong internal evidence of my being an 

 Kafi Lothian man, that it would be to no purpoie to deny it. In- 

 deed, I have fonietimes boafled both of that, and of my con- 

 nexion bv blood and friendfliip with many refpc^lable tenants in 

 that county. I was educated there, and fucked in, with my mo- 

 ther's milk, all the common-place outcries againfl landlords ; and 

 I carried abroad with me, early in life, the molt fettled perfuafion 

 (if the horrors of the farmer's fituation. This was kept alive l^y 

 the letters of my friends, and blown up iiuo a flamiC in 1771, af- 

 ter the eftate of Dirleton had been divided, and let by the advice 

 of Mr Fowlis. At my return, I renewed my acquaintance with 

 ]\Xr I*** in -j-*** }-***#*j whom I had known in Jam'^ica. It 

 \vould have been diflicult to meet with a fitter perfon to keep up, 

 3iay to flrengthen my old prejudices. He was continually ringing 

 changes upon the miferable Condition of the farmer ; how, placed 

 between the two worll fets of men in the countjry, the lairds on 

 the one hand, and the labourers on the other, it was impofnble 

 iqx him to exift. My friend is a man of great eloquence : he 

 held it up in many new views, proved it in fo many different 

 ways, and was fo much really in earnefl, that I was perfe6tly 

 convinced the fituation of the farmer was not by any means an 

 enviable one. It was not before I had been well allured that, 

 in his fhort leafe for nineteen years, he had added a confiderable 

 fum to his fortune, and feen his farm \tt to a Ikillul and thriv- 

 ing tenant at an advanced rent of 500I., that I began to fulpecb 

 my belief might be ill-founded. I tried to recolletl cireundtan- 

 ces, to combine, and to compare the appearance, the comforts, 

 the enjoyments, the every thing of modern farmers, with thofe 

 of their predeceffors ; and I could no longer credit that men of 

 liberal education, agreeable manners, greater capital and fuperlor 

 fkill, with improved machinery, and every thing about them 

 wearing the face of plenty, were lefs at eale than their foref^i- 

 thcrs had been, in the lamented days of low rents, and tender in- 

 dulgent landlords. 



I learned to read of a refpeOable old \yoman in the vilh.gc •, 

 and, at this moment, my foul throbs with ten thouland tender- 

 n'-fli;=;, and fickens within me, when I recolleft the innocent plays 

 I ar.d my little compeers fported at upon the Smiddy Green, long 

 finee fubmitted to the plough. My fchool-feilcws were tjie fons 

 -.iud daugl iters of hynds aTid day-labourers, who were taught by 



r miltrcfs to anfwer the qucftions in the Mother's and Single 



Catechifm?, 



