112 Ten Years of Ecut Lothian Farminq. 



harmless limits. Mr. Aitcliison of Alderston has also passed 

 away, an able man who, with great success, farmed his own 

 property. For fully 40 years he kept a flock of Southdown sheep, 

 frequently refreshing the blood from the Babraham stock, and 

 gaining many prizes in agricultural shows. Mr. Brodie of 

 Abbeymain, the leading farmer of his day, an account of whose 

 system of management is given in the 'Journal' of 1853, has 

 also gone from among us, and his farm is not now occupied by 

 his family. 



The competition for land has, however, been the great cause 

 of change among the occupants of farms, the old tenants at the 

 end of a lease being almost always outbid by strangers. Descend- 

 ing in the scale, we find that a still greater change is taking 

 place among the labouring population. In former times, when 

 son succeeded father in the occupancy of a farm, the "hinds" 

 were as stationary as their masters, but the ties that bound them 

 together are now nearly broken. New masters employ new men, 

 and the old scattered cottages in which old ploughmen used to 

 end their days are all cleared away, and the failing " hind " has 

 to find a refuge in the town or the village, where he must live 

 by the poor-rate and not by occasional country work, \oung 

 ploughmen seem now to seek change for the sake of change, and 

 the hiring-market — a foul blot in the agricultural escutcheon — is 

 every year more and more crowded by a thoughtless mob, of 

 whom their fathers would have been ashamed. 



Comparatively few East Lothian ploughmen have as yet 

 availed themselves of the legal relief afforded to age or infirmity 

 when combined with poverty, but the number is on the increase ; 

 and, in consequence of this, much lamentation is made over what 

 is called a sad change in the character of the Scottish peasant. 

 The change, we maintain, is caused by circumstances over 

 which the ploughmen have no control whatever, and of all classes 

 of society they are perhaps the least to blame in the matter. 

 The fierce competition for land, and the consequent rise in the 

 rents of farms, have driven farmers to buy labour in the cheapest 

 market ; and the landowner, pressed by the tenant for buildings 

 to shelter horse and ox, has reduced to a minimum the dwelling- 

 houses on his property. 



Let us see the effect of this. Suppose that, there were standing 

 on a farm somewhat dilapidated cottages, inhabited by ten families, 

 and that the heads of some of these were past their prime. The 

 farm is re-let, and the old occupant gives place to a new tenant at 

 an advanced rent. New cottages are built, but in place of the ten 

 old tenements pulled down, seven only are erected. The oldest 

 " hinds " are dismissed, and labourers from a distance, chiefly 

 Lish, do their work. Formerly the three extruded sexagenarians 



