212 Notes and Sketches. 



the fray had been so savage as to involve actual loss 

 of life or very serious damage " to lith or limb." The 

 character of those whose position placed them above the 

 common people was not always indeed regarded as en- 

 titling them to be spoken of with unqualified respect. 

 The writer of a letter of date 1750, discussing the agricul- 

 ture of the time, gives his opinion of Aberdeensliire 

 landlords, and the relations between them and their 

 tenants in these words " The landed gentlemen, many 

 of them, look upon religion as below them, morality as 

 an unnecessary incumbrance, economy as sordid, and 

 their tenants as a species of animals, made to be abused 

 and oppressed to labour and spend their strength to 

 maintain their luxury and riot." Like enough the 

 writer desired to put in his tints strongly, but what nine- 

 teenth century Radical has ever denounced the terri- 

 torial shortcomings of his time in more unsparing terms 1 

 Nor even in relation to the sore subject of bastardy 

 did the people of last century in the north-east of Scot- 

 land hold a greatly more favourable position than their 

 descendants do. Possibly the actual percentage of 

 illegitimate births may have been somewhat less. We 

 have no available statistics of a comprehensive sort to 

 compare with the Registrar's figures of the present time. 

 But the Kirk-Session records serve the end in a rough, 

 yet reasonably reliable way. And a careful scrutiny uf 

 some of these records does not encourage the belief that 

 even the proportional number of bastards to population 

 was always very appreciably less the number of aggra- 

 vated and specially bad cases that needed severe deal- 

 ing, and where the Session had to call in the aid of the 

 Presbytery, was certainly as great or greater than now. 

 Any inquiry bearing on the causes of a high rate of 

 bastardy in these districts would lead us into irrelevant 

 and probably fruitless discussion of a vexed question. 

 But of one thing we may hold ourselves assured that 

 at no period known to history was the proportion of 

 bastard births other than considerable. Starting on 





