334 CORN LAWS LEASES. 



lose, and content to live, year after year, dependents on the 

 property, and with arrears of rent accumulating. People 

 merely wishing- a place of residence, and not calculating on 

 profit from the farm, having the means of living from other 

 sources. 



Such is the state of East Lothian farmers, that during the 

 last twenty years perhaps three-fourths of them have not ful 

 filled their original contracts, and the funds that have been 

 lost in cultivating the soil is incalculable. I have known a 

 tenant rent a farm with a capital of seven thousand pounds 

 sterling, consisting of about 400 acres, and remove from it 

 before the expiry of his lease, with only five hundred pounds 

 in his pocket, and in arrears of rent to his landlord the sum 



of three thousand pounds. Mr , of our acquaintance, 



on a farm under 100 acres, incurred twelve hundred pounds of 

 arrears, and got off by paying only two hundred of them. 

 With such competitors, a young man who must live by his 

 profession, can hardly wish to be successful. The obtaining 

 of a lease at the present time may often be considered little 

 better than the first chance of being ruined, and many tenants, 

 after leading anxious lives, and exposed to the insults of rent 

 exactors, may think themselves fortunate if they escape with 

 a remnant of their fortunes. 



The feeling that landholders, agents, and factors sometimes 

 evince towards the tenantry is so hostile, that a small portion 

 of the farmers originally connected with East Lothian obtain 

 leases of late years, the new tenants generally coming from 

 other countries. So much is this the case, that I have some 

 times regarded such tenants as a proscribed race, and thought 

 that the sooner most of them put their house in order for remo 

 val the better for themselves. It is of no consequence how 

 respectable the old tenant may be in private life, or high in 

 his profession. A promise of rent, although not likely to be 

 fulfilled, is a never-failing recommendation to a stranger, when 

 joined to subserviency, without which it is very difficult to 

 obtain a farm on any terms. If a tenant has opinions, they 

 must agree with those of agents or factors on the estate, or 

 warfare ensues ; and if he is an individual of talent or inde 

 pendent feeling, he is hunted with more zeal as a dangerous 



