No. 8. 



Scotch Farmins; in the Lothians. 



253 



farmers, and the high rate at which the 

 land is leased. 



Considering the fate of the corn-laws to 

 be sealed, and all unequal protection to the 

 landed interest about to be withdrawn, I 

 was anxious, both as a landlord and a farm- 

 er, to prepare for the state of things which 

 such a change might introduce ; more par- 

 ticularly as a farmer, to prepare myself, by 

 increased skill and economy in the manage- 

 ment of my farm, for the keener competi- 

 tion and lower prices which the free intro- 

 duction of foreign agricultural produce must 

 establish. 



I may, perhaps, just mention, that my 

 farm is in the county of Hertford, and con- 

 sists of 500 acres. It is conducted on the 

 best system current twenty or twenty-five 

 years ago, superior to any thing in these 

 parts,* and my bailiff was brought up in the 

 Lothians; but aware that we might have 

 been stationary, whilst elsewhere, as in 

 Scotland, a rapid progress had been going 

 on, I determined to ascertain the actual 

 state of farming where it had made the 

 greatest advance, and, with this view, de- 

 sired him to give me the meeting at Edin- 

 burgh, on the first of July last. Owing to 

 the kindness of a friend, who understood 

 farming well himself, and who had an ex- 

 tensive personal acquaintance with the 

 farmers, I was enabled to visit a number of 

 farms of various descriptions, and to com- 

 municate with the farmers themselves in 

 freedom and confidence. 



It would be uninteresting to the general 

 reader, were I even competent to do it, 

 which I am not, to enter minutely into de- 

 tails : those capable of understanding them 

 should visit the country ; and, whether they 

 do so on a tour of profit, or amusement, they 

 will be amply repaid. 



The general conviction which remains 

 upon my mind is this, that with a system 

 equal to that of the Lothians, established 

 throughout England, landlords might receive 

 double rents,t farmers be rich and prosper- 



* Lancashire and Cheshire. 



t It has been objected to the notion that English 

 landlords could obtain double rents were the Lothian 

 farming to become general, that the Scotch, at present, 

 benefit by a union of their own skill, and the high 

 price of produce incident to the unskilful cultivation 

 of England, and that with the low prices which would 

 follow a great increase of production, rents would not 

 increase in equal proportion. 



This is true, but unimportant, for the power of feed- 

 ing a double number of men on the produce of a given 

 estate, will, in the long run, confer upon the owner of 

 that estate an equivalent to a double nominal rent. 

 In like manner it may be objected, that farmers 



ous, and the country be rendered, for two 

 generations, independent of foreign supplies, 

 notwithstanding an abolition of all protective 

 duties. I am confident the agricultural pro- 

 duce of England, Wales, and the west of 

 Scotland, might be doubled ;| and that of 



must, ultimately, come down to the ordinary current 

 rate of profits ; but farmers, employing with spirit and 

 intelligence a capital of X4000 or XSOOO, may, at al! 

 times, be called rich, as a class, compared with the pre- 

 sent race of farmers in England. 



t The possibility of doubling the agricultural pro- 

 duce of England has been doubted by many, and utterly 

 denied by others. My conviction, however, is shared 

 by men more competent to give an opinion on such a 

 subject, than I am. In the " Compendium of the Evi- 

 dence given before a Committee of the House of Commons, 

 appointed in 1836, to enquire into Agricultural Distress, 

 by William Hutt, Esq.M. P." (evidence of the most 

 interesting and important nature, rendered accessible 

 to the public generally, through the medium of this 

 Compendium,) we find the curious fact, that at the pe- 

 riod of the greatest distress amongst the English farm- 

 ers, (J833 to 1836,) the Scotch farmers, universally, re- 

 presented themselves as thriving, and improvements of 

 every kind as going on at a rapid rate. Since that 

 time, (the year 1836) the same high prices which have 

 removed the complaints of the English farmers, have 

 placed the Scotch in a most flourishing condition. 



Mr. Oliphant, M. P. for Perth, a landowner and ex- 

 tensive practical farmer in Perthshire, is asked by the 

 Committee, " Is there a great diflcrence between the 

 cultivation of Scotland and England ?— Ans. There is 

 in most parts , there is some very fine farming in Nor- 

 thumberland, but generally speaking I should say that 

 upon the soil of England the produce might, with very 

 great ease, be doubled." " Its productive qualities are 

 not sufliciently drawn out?— Ans. Nothing like it; 

 it astonishes a Scotchman, who comes to England, to 

 see so fine a soil, under so fine a climate, lying in such 

 a state." 



And further on, he states, " I think there are many 

 thousand acres of the best land in England, yielding 

 only one fourth part of the produce, which a very small 

 amount of intelligence and industry applied to it, 

 would quadruple." And again, " I do not know any 

 land in England, within my own knowledge, as to 

 which I am not satisfied, that if I were to purchase it 

 at market price, and expend capital upon it, it would 

 return more than £5 per cent, upon the prime cost of 

 the land and capital expended." 



Mr. Smith of Deanston, also, states of his own farm 

 in Perthshire, 200 acres, "I should say that .15s. an 

 acre would have been a fair rent, in its former state ; 

 now, it is worth £2." "■ Its former state," being the 

 state of a great part of England at present; and if his 

 land could, by these improvements, be doubled in value, 

 why not English farms by similar improvements? It 

 is repeatedly stated, moreover, by the Scotch witnesses 

 in the same evidence, that peaty and heather land, by 

 the same improvements, chiefly through draining and 

 subsoil ploughing, was being brought into cultivation 

 at a rapid pace ; the value of such land rising from 4j. 



