SCOTLAND. 



631 



rs reside, the carrying of peat forms n similar servi. 

 W^y-^ tude, as does, more rarely, harvest work ; a plan w : 

 AgricuU reduce.-, tin- Miinil tt-nant partially to the condition < 



cottar, but which is rendered necessary by the total 

 want of him! labour, and the absence of a class which 

 makes this a trade. It is very rarely that leases are 

 granted to the small Highland tenants, whose farms 

 average from three to five pounds annually ; but they 

 are seldom removed, except in cases of extreme mis- 

 conduct, nor are their rents indefinitely raised on any 

 eventual improvement of their farms. Should this 

 happen, however, no melioration is allowed ; and 

 as they build their own houses without assistance 

 from the landlord, this property, such as it is, falls in 

 to him. Where the rents are paid in money, this 

 is provided by the sale of cattle, or sometimes by 

 the fishery ; as there is no surplus produce from the 

 cultivated land capable of paying a rent. 



The prevailing system, however, at present in the 

 Highlands, is that of separate tenantry, popularly call- 

 ed crofting. This system is partly the consequence of 

 the division of the ancient runrig farms among the 

 tenants upon them, and partly, and principally, the 

 result of new settlements, consequent on the introduc- 

 tion of large sheep farms, and the accompanying 

 migrations to the sea- shores. Thus, not only has a 

 ckss of separated and sole tenants been introduced 

 into the interior and old settled districts, but a great 

 quantity of land before unoccupied, or ill-pastured by 

 wandering cattle, has been rendered productive, and 

 the seat of an entirely new population. 



A croft is, in fact, a sole farm ; and though, without 

 lease,' no way differing from the common classes of 

 small farms in Scotland. But these holdings are very 

 limited ; being barely sufficient in most cases for the 

 maintenance of a single family ; while, in many situa- 

 tions, they are insufficient even for that, or are t least 

 incapable of paying the rent and maintaining the fami- 

 ly both. It is impossible to name the exact quantity 

 of land, as that varies according to its quality; but 

 from three to five acres of bad arable land, or of rocky 

 hind fit only for the spade, is a general average ; while 

 the unenclosed pasture is such as to maintain a few 

 cattle, and, occasionally, some sheep and the necessary 

 horses. In this case, as the pastures are common in a 

 certain sense, each tenant's cattle are limited and paid 

 for in the rent, by an allotted charge for each class. 



The crofters also build their own houses, and often 

 under great difficulties and restrictions ; not being al- 

 lowed the use of wood, though growing, nor suffered 

 to take a turf for covering ; while, in case of removal, 

 the labour is surrendered and lost. However bad the 

 cultivation of these petty farms may be, it is better than 

 under the ancient system of common holding, though 

 not differing in the rotation, nor in the objects of cul- 

 ture. The tenant, knowing the exact extent and pow- 

 ers of his land, and profiting the next year by the la- 

 bours of the preceding, is enabled to bestow more 

 accurate attention upon it, is restrained from a waste- 

 ful excess of useless horses, as was formerly the fashion, 

 and manages his little stock of cattle to a better pur- 

 pose. There are many of these tenements so rocky 

 that they can be wrought only by the spade, or the 

 caschrom ; and thus many spots of ground that never 

 would have been occupied under the old system, have 

 been broken up for cultivation, and are the seats of a 

 new population. 



Hence, in fact, the great increase of the general po- 

 pulation of the Highlands, and more particularly of that 

 of the sea shores. And it is to the sea shores that this 



fly jpplic, while it originated in 

 the sheep farming, in tl. land*, and in former 



days, t ,- were situated in the glens, and in such 



fragment- of land in the mountain*, as were adapted to tarr 

 the miserable cultivation there carried on, while the 

 pastures were indiscriminately occupied by black ct- 

 llc. Hut they wen- not half Hocked in tome places, 

 while near the farms they were co overstocked, tint 

 the cattle were starved, and frecjucmiy died of want 

 towards the end of the winter. Moreover, there are 

 many places where cattle cannot tread from their weight, 

 and which from their inactivity they cannot climb ; 

 while, besides all this, the necessity of winter pasture* 

 limited the number of cattle which could be kept on all 

 the summer ones. All these difficulties and losses 

 are removed bv the substitution of sheep, which could 

 eat what black cattle could not reach, or could not 

 consume, and which, being sold off the breeding farms 

 when the summer pastures were consumed, required 

 much less win\er food. Thus there was a positive ova- 

 tion of food, and consequently of rent, we might truly 

 say of land, by substituting sheep for cattle; and hence 

 the great increase of value which the Highland estates 

 experienced from this radical change. 



But where so many thousand acres were thus occu- 

 pied in one farm, it became impossible to suffer the 

 glens and green pastures scattered about it to remain 

 in cultivation and in other hands. The smaller tenants 

 could not farm sheep, because these can only be raised 

 and managed to profit in large flocks, and by great ca- 

 pitalists, while they also require a degree of attention 

 which the small Highland tenants and shepherds have 

 proved themselves incapable of giving. Hence the 

 larger tracts of pasture necessarily fell into the hands 

 of capitalists, and were allotted in large divisions; and 

 thus also it became necessary to remove the small te- 

 nants, that the sheep farm might be preserved from in- 

 terference, and that the arable lands within them which 

 produced the only winter pastures, might be reserved 

 in aid of these for winterings. 



This was the new system which still continues, 

 though not now capable of much further increase ; and 

 it was the system which produced so much clamour, 

 and which originally led to those emigrations which ex- 

 cited so much groundless alarm. And as this system 

 was the original cause of the crofting, the consideration 

 of the one necessarily involves that of the other, and 

 they are thus both conveniently considered in one ge- 

 neral view. 



In those cases where the holder of the interior rough 

 lands possessed no sea shore, or no extent of separate 

 arable land, emigration became an inevitable conse- 

 quence of the change, because there was no place to 

 which the tenants could be moved. But fortunately 

 many of these holders also possessed sea shores, which 

 were not only ill occupied,but could not be conveniently 

 thrown into general pasturage, while, from their generally 

 green nature, and fertile though rocky soils, they were 

 well adapted to a system of divided and petty farming. 

 Thus the proprietors provided settlements for their 

 ejected tenantry, and at the same time added in f 

 ways to the value of their lands and to their rentals, by 

 raising the value of the pastures, and by an absolute 

 creation of new lands on the sea shores. That value 

 was indeed increased in a third and distinct manner; 

 and hence a great additional augmentation not only in 

 the rent, but in the population of the country. 



The nature of this last increase may be already con- 

 jectured from our preceding remarks on the fisheries. 

 It is quite impossible that any rent could be paid at all 

 3 



