THE INVERLIEVER STATE FOREST. 25 



Ireland, it must always have been a minor consideration there 

 as compared with its importance to Scotland, and what was a 

 regrettable oversight in the case of Ireland would be a fatal 

 error in any scheme for the solution of the Scottish land 

 question ; for with us afforestation is the crux of the whole 

 problem, in that it is by far the surest way to increase the 

 landward population. A policy to provide work ultimately 

 for two or three hundred thousand men surely comes before 

 one for creating a few score, or even a few hundred, of small 

 farms. At anyrate, the alternative should be placed before the 

 country, for if the whole of the Highlands was divided into 

 small farms, it would add very little, if at all, to its existing 

 population. Plant the Highlands, and the number of its 

 people would double. Captain Sinclair provided that one of 

 the three agricultural commissioners under his Bill should be 

 a person skilled in forestry, but the Bill characteristically made 

 no provision whatever whereby this skilled person could turn 

 his knowledge to practical use. He was unprovided with staff, 

 location, or funds ; he was to be a mere name and cipher. 

 Nothing could have come of this insertion of words in a 

 project of law. 



The proposed land Court had the widest powers to assume 

 control of land at its own valuation for " experiment " in small 

 farms; it was expressly debarred from purchase, which is 

 sufficient evidence that the Government had never given the 

 least practical consideration to forestry. For whatever the 

 effects of divided ownership in agricultural occupation, it has 

 not yet been advocated either as a panacea for the ills of 

 silviculture or as a possible form of tenure for State forests. 

 The effect of the Bill, were it to pass, which, fortunately, is not 

 probable, would be to exclude all lands now allocated as out- 

 runs from any future scheme of State afforestation. Such 

 moorland would carry no more population whether it were 

 under the stock of a large or small farmer, but under timber 

 it would support thirty or forty times the number of men 

 it can now employ. To schedule land suited to silviculture 

 is an essential preliminary to any real social and economic 

 land policy in Scotland, and therefore we should press this 

 consideration upon the country with all the force at our 

 command. Unless that be done, and done quickly, there is 

 grave risk that some haphazard reversion to eighteenth-century 



