246 T?IE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



" security " does not necessarily mean a certificate for 

 Consols or railway shares. It means the certainty that 

 repayment will be made at the proper time. Consols, 

 certificates and railway shares our intended beneficiaries 



small cultivators and the like — have none. But they 



know one another, they can gauge one another's honesty 

 and means of repaying, and they can watch one another 

 effectively in an inoffensive way. The originators of the 

 famous Scotch " Cash Credit," which, in the words of 

 H. Dunning Macleod, may claim " the far-famed agriculture 

 of the Lothians, the manufactures of Glasgow and Paisley, 

 and the unrivalled steamships of the Clyde for its own 

 proper children," understood this well. 



" There is one part of this system," so says the Report of the 

 Lords and Commons Committees appointed to investigate the 

 matter in 1826, " which is stated by all witnesses (and, in the 

 opinion of the Committee is very justly stated) to have had the 

 best effects upon the people of Scotland, and particularly upon 

 the people of the middle and poorer classes of society, in producing 

 and encouraging habits of frugality and industry. . . . From 

 the facility which these cash credits give to all the small transac- 

 tions of the country, and from the opportunities which they 

 offer to persons who begin business with little or no capital but 

 their character, to employ profitably the minutest products of 

 their industry, it cannot be doubted that the most important 

 advantages are derived to the whole community." " The wit- 

 nesses whose evidence we have quoted," so the Report goes on, 

 " stated that they calculated that the number of persons who had 

 cash credits granted to them amounted to about 10,000 or 11,000 

 and, as the average niimber of securities to each bond might be 

 taken at three, there were about 30,000 persons interested as 

 securities ; so that the total number of persons at that period 

 interested in the system was at least 40,000. . . . This system 

 has a great effect upon the moral habits of the people, because 

 those who are securities feel an interest in watching over their 

 conduct ; and if they find that they are misconducting them- 

 selves, they withdraw the security." " The practical effect of 

 which is," so says the witness quoted, " that the sureties do in 

 a greater or less degree keep an attentive eye upon the future 

 transactions and character of the person for whom they have 

 thus pledged themselves ; and it is perhaps difficult for those who 

 are not intimately acquainted with it to conceive the moral check 

 which is afforded upon the conduct of the members of a great 



