THE SCOTTISH LAND COURT 65 



The nineteenth century saw wholesale evictions of crofters by landlords, 

 to provide land for large sheepfarms and to provide deer-forests. A re- 

 sultant agrarian crisis caused the Crofters' Holdings Act of 1886 and the 

 whole question of agrarian conditions in Scotland has since been raised. 



b) The small tenant's tenure. — The holders of land classified by the 

 Small Ivandholders' Act of 1911 as " statutory tenants " are distinguished from 

 the crofters in that their landlords have paid for the whole or the greater 

 part of their buildings and in that they do not enjo}- rights of common. By 

 far the greater number of Scottish small holdings outside the crofting counties 

 are under this form of tenure. I/ike the crofts they were at one time tending 

 to disappear ; for from the eighteenth century onwards they were merged by 

 their landlords into large farms, both arable and pastoral, or sacrificed in 

 order to make grouse moors and deer forests. 



Tenants of small holdings of both types in Scotland usually practice 

 some industry other than farming. In the north they are fishermen ; 

 they or rather their womenfolk make tweed from their wool, and — especially 

 in Shetland — knit it. In the Orkneys and the Hebrides they burn kelp. In 

 the south the}' often follow a trade and those of them who are near large towns 

 are sometimes market-gardeners. 



c) The large tenant's tenure. — Tliis form of tenure, found chiefly in 

 South and East Scotland, approximates to that general in England. The 

 landlord's estate is divided into large farms which he lets to farmers on lease. 

 The peculiarities which distinguish these farms from the analogous English 

 farms are outside the scope of this article. 



d) The tenure of freehold large farmers. — The " bonnet lairds " of Scot- 

 tland , who owned and farmed the hundred or couple of hundred acres on 

 which stood their house, were still numerous in the eighteenth century ; 

 but the fortunes built up after the Union, and the ambition of fortunate Scots- 

 men to become landholders on the English scale, were against them. Very 

 many of their holdings are now leasehold farms on the estates of large pro- 

 prietors. 



§ 2. Causes of agrarian reform. 



The agrarian reforms which have been attempted in Scotland during 

 the last thirty 3''ears have had various causes. There were first the griev- 

 ances of the crofters and other smallholders — their insecurit}' of tenure and 

 the disproportionate rents they sometimes had to paj^ — wliich eventually 

 produced a public scandal and had the Act of 1886 as their immediate out- 

 come. Secondly there was the fact that Scotland suffered from underfarm- 

 ing. This was diie in part to the general circumstance that tenants at one 

 and the same time were entitled to no compensation for their improvements 

 and had no security of tenure. What large farmer or smallholder would 

 sink capital in land from which he might he evicted at the expir}'^ of his lease 

 or the end of the 5^ear, unless he at least knew that he could then claim some 

 compensation for his unexhaasted capital ? Other causes for underfarming 



