xxiv ORMISTOUN'S LETTERS 



was Robert's son ; and succeeding to the leases on his father's 

 death (1784), he became, more than ever, an ardent and intel- 

 ligent improver under guidance of the laird. We hear much 

 of him in the Letters, both as correspondent and fellow- 

 improver. These leases virtually made the holders perpetual 

 feuars,^ and as the total value of the estate was not great, 

 John Cockburn and his father certainly belied the ' grippy ' 

 and shortsighted character usually attributed to men of their 

 class and time. See, for a conspicuous case of his fairness, 

 p. 76. Defoe, writing in the Union days, justly ascribed 

 the miserable plight of the Scottish peasant to the mediaeval 

 system of land tenure which prevailed. John Cockburn, in 

 a letter to Wight (1725), puts his views as a landlord in 

 terms greatly to his credit. ' I hate tyranny in every shape, 

 and shall always have greater pleasure in seeing my tenants 

 making something under me which they can call their own 

 than in getting a little more myself by squeezing a hundred 

 poor families till their necessities make them my slaves. 

 I hope my actions have convinced you of all this, and that I 

 have hitherto studied your advantage equal at least to the 

 making the estate better to those who shall come after me, and 

 I am sure much more than any advance of the rent to myself.' 

 The wise benevolence of this model landlord comes out in a 

 letter of 1726. ' My tenants are all interested in the future 

 of the place as well as in the present, for your children will 

 profit by your work. No father can have more satisfaction in 

 the prosperity of his children than I in the welfare of those 

 on my estate.' In answer to Wight's of July 16, 1725, he 

 tells him that his turnips should have been hoed by leaving 

 ten inches between every two — evidence of drill-sowing at 

 this early date. Wight showed (1736) in Edinburgh a turnip 

 thirty-four pounds in weight. 'You tell me you have enclosed 



^ These leases, being contested by the Hopetoun family, were the subject of 

 much litigation, beginning (1773) ^^ the Court of Session, and ending (1865) in 

 the House of Lords, which sustained them. 



