74 



GREAT BRITAIN" - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IX GENERAL 



(i) In two cases the amounts clained were not stated. 



e) Grants of Leave to assign Holdings. 



The Crofters' Act of 1886 forbade that a crofter should "execute any 

 deed purporting to assign his tenancy' ". This created a hardship for crof- 

 ters disabled by age or infirmity ; and the Act of 1911 therefore ruled that a 

 landholder whom illness, old age or infirmity had rendered unfit for work 

 might apply to the I,and Court for leave to assign his holding to a member 01 

 his family, or any person who would, failing nearer heirs, succeed him if 

 he died intestate. 



In 1914 the court granted leave to assign their holdings to sixt}' appli- 

 cants in the crofting counties and none outside them. 



/) Effects of the War. 



The War affected the work of the Land Court in several ways. In the 

 first place the numbers of its staft' were considerably reduced. 



In the second place the extraordinary response made by Scotland to 

 the call for recruits for the army and the naw caused the absence of the 

 large majority of the younger crofters and statutory small tenants. The 

 case may be instanced of 224 acres of the farm of Aignish on the Lewis, 

 on which are thirty-two holdings : from these 53 men went to join the 

 colours. The natural result of volunteering on this scale was a great reduc- 

 tion in the number of applications which came before the Land Court. The 

 numbers of the landlords and factors and of the law agents they employ 

 — of all those \\dth whom the Land Court usually does business — were pro- 

 portionately reduced. 



Another cause for a lessening of the court's business was the deflection 

 of pubUc money from agrarian objects to others more directly connected 

 with the war. The reduction of parliamentary grants tended to reduce the 

 activities of the Board of Agriculture in the matter of promoting schemes 

 for the formation of new holdings and enlargement of existing hokUngs, and 

 thus to reduce the number of these schemes which came before the Land 

 Court. 



