576 



CROISIC 



CROLL 



beginning of 1884. In May 1885 a remedial mea- 

 sure was introduced into the House of Commons 

 which proved abortive, owing to the political inci- 

 dents of the time ; but the question was resumed 

 in a more liberal spirit in 1886, when the Crofters' 

 Holdings Act received the sanction of parliament 

 .and the crown. This statute embodies in substance 

 the following provisions : The recognition of the 

 ' crofting parish ' as the area within which the.act 

 is applicable ; security of tenure ; fair rents ; faculty 

 to renounce tenancy ; compensation for improve- 

 ments ; right to claim the enlargement of holdings ; 

 concession of testamentary powers in relation to the 

 holding. And under this statute, three Commis- 

 sioners were nominated to determine the areas 

 within which the act shall be applicable, and to 

 carry its provisions into effect. 



In addition to these legislative enactments, the 

 government has, in the appropriate administrative 

 departments, initiated measures for the emigration 

 of families from congested districts, the supply of 

 fishing-boats and gear, the development of tele- 

 graphic communication, and the mitigation of the 

 school-rate by increased grants. 



The measures referred to, whether legislative or 

 .administrative, have been formed with an equitable 

 consideration of the interests and rights of all 

 parties concerned, and with a genuine desire to do 

 good. The conditions by which they are surrounded 

 are so complex, and the financial advances hitherto 

 contemplated so restricted, that no immediate 

 results of importance can be expected. A still 

 graver impediment unhappily exists in the extreme 

 poverty of the class whom it is desired to benefit. 



Closely associated with the crofters by origin, 

 avocations, and distresses, are the cottars. These 

 people are occupiers of dwellings and small patches 

 of ground, holding rarely from the landlord, more 

 frequently from the farmer, the township, or the 

 individual crofter, sometimes mere squatters, pay- 

 ing no rent and owning no allegiance. They exist 

 by fishing, by casual employments on the land, and 

 by public charity. Cottars are intermingled with 

 their better-endowed kindred in all quarters of the 

 crofting country, but they are most numerous and 

 most miserable in the Long Island. Their claims 

 .are recognised by the Act of 1886, which grants 

 them compensation for improvements in the case of 

 Arbitrary and voluntary removal. 



The crofter and cottar population in the six 

 counties to which the Act of 1886 applies were 

 roughly computed by the Royal Commission of 1883 

 to comprise about 40,000 families, or 200,000 souls. 



The Crofters Act of 1886 is applicable in crofting 

 parishes only within the counties of Argyll, Inver- 

 ness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, 

 and Orkney and Shetland. Crofters' tenancies are 

 diffused in other counties, especially in Aberdeen- 

 shire and Perthshire, but as they are subject to 

 more favourable economic conditions, it was not 

 considered necessary to admit them to the benefits 

 of special legislation. Further legislation has been 

 repeatedly proposed, but a government bill of 1894 

 was withdrawn. 



LE, a small port on the Atlantic, in the 

 French department of Loire-Inferieure, 20 miles W. 

 of St Nazaire by rail. It has a sardine-fishery, and 

 is a popular watering-place. The name is familiar 

 from Browning's Two Poets of Croisic. Pop. 2291. 



Croker, JOHN WILSON, politician and man of 

 letters, was born at Galway, 20th December 1780, 

 the son of the surveyor-general of customs and 

 excise in Ireland. After four years at Trinity 

 College, Dublin, in 1800 he entered Lincoln's Inn, 

 but in 1802 was called to the Irish bar. Two 

 satires on the Irish stage and on Dublin society 

 {1804-5) proved brilliant hits; so did his Sketch 



of Ireland Past and Present (1807), a pamphlet 

 advocating Catholic emancipation. In 1809 he 

 published a poem on the battle of Talavera, which 

 Wellington pronounced 'entertaining,' and during 

 the same year helped to found the Quarterly, to 

 which up to 1854 he contributed 260 articles. He 

 had entered parliament for Downpatrick in 1807 ; 

 and now in 1809 he was rewarded with the lucrative 

 post of Secretary of the Admiralty for his warm 

 defence of the Duke of York, who was charged 

 with conniving at and sharing in the sale of army 

 commissions by his mistress. That post he held 

 till 1830, and then retired with a pension of 1500 

 a year. On the passing of the Reform Bill ( 1832), 

 he refused to re-enter parliament, unable 'spon- 

 taneously to take an active share in a system 

 which must subvert the church, the peerage, and 

 the throne in one word, the constitution of Eng- 

 land.' He would not even take office under Peel, 

 his old friend (1834); and with Peel he broke 

 utterly on the repeal of the Corn Laws ( 1846 ). 

 He died 10th August 1857. Among the seventeen 

 works that he wrote or edited were his Stories 

 for Children from English History (1817), which 

 suggested to Scott the Tales of a Grandfather ; 

 the Suffolk Papers (1823); his Boswell's Johnson 

 ( 1831 ) ; and Essays on the Early Period of the 

 French Revolution (1857). By some Croker is 

 chiefly remembered for his onslaught on Keats, 

 and Macaulay's onslaught on him (Macaulay 

 ' detested him more than cold boiled veal ' ) ; or 

 as the originator of the term Conservative ( q. v. ) ; 

 a founder of the Athenaeum Club, and the ' Rigby ' 

 of Disraeli's Coningsby the jackal of ' Lord Mon- 

 mouth ' ( the Marquis of Hertford ). But in Sir 

 Theodore Martin's nine-page eulogy in the Diction- 

 ary of National Biography (vol. xiii. 1888), he 

 figures as a 'debater of the first rank,' a master 

 of ' rhetoric that eclipsed Macaulay's, ' the ' friend 

 and confidant of many of the best and ablest men 

 of his time,' a pattern of 'sincerity,' 'consistency,' 

 'devoted loyalty and unselfishness.' See also his 

 Memoirs, Diaries, and Correspondence, edited by 

 Louis J. Jennings (3 vols. 1884). 



Croker, THOMAS CROFTON, Irish folklorist, 

 was born at Cork, 15th January 1798, and in 1814 

 was apprenticed to a Quaker merchant, but four 

 years later got a clerkship in the Admiralty through 

 John Wilson Croker, a friend, though no relation, 

 of his father's. He retained this post till 1850, and 

 died at Old Brompton, 8th August 1854. As a boy 

 of fourteen he had begun to collect songs and 

 legends of the Irish peasantry ; in 1818 he sent 

 Moore nearly forty old Irish melodies ; and in 

 1825 published anonymously his Fairy Legends and 

 Traditions of the South of Ireland, a work which 

 charmed Scott, and was translated into German by 

 the brothers Grimm (1826). A second series fol- 

 lowed in 1827, and the whole reached a 6th edition 

 in 1882. Of nearly twenty more works of which 

 Croker was either the author or editor, the best 

 were Researches in the South of Ireland (1824); 

 Legends of the Lakes (1829), illustrated by his 

 friend Maclise, and re-issued as Killarney Legends 

 ( 1876 ) ; The Adventures of Barney Mahoney ( 1832); 

 A Memoir of Joseph Holt, General of the Irish Rebels 

 (1837) ; and Popular Songs of Ireland (1839 ; new 

 ed. by Professor H. Morley, 1885 ). Croker was a 

 zealous antiquary, a member of many learned 

 societies. See the Life by his son, prefixed to the 

 1859 edition of the Fairy Legends. 



Croll, JAMES, physicist, was born in 1821 near 

 Coupar-Angus, in Perthshire. He received an ele- 

 mentary school-education, but in science was wholly 

 self-trained. Successively millwright, insurance- 

 agent, and keeper of the museum of Anderson's 

 College, Glasgow, in 1867 he joined the staff of the 



