Page:What are the causes of the distressed state of the Highlands of Scotland?.pdf/11

11 Were this wise suggestion adopted, the cost of taking out leases would be reduced to a minimum amount, and this cause would no longer operate to prevent their adoption, and would cease to be one of this sources of Highland distress.

But the cost, delay, and difficulty placed in the landlord's way in enforcing covenants, is likely to have as much effect in preventing him from granting leases as the cost of the leases themselves; for unless the legal arrangements are such that the enforcement of covenants is so prompt and easy that they are rarely broken, the proprietors lose all the security for their rent, and for the value of the holdings which the lease was intended to secure to them. Now the Scotch law, which is worthy of our imitation in many respects, is in this nearly on a par with our own. The legal proceedings for the enforcement of covenants and obligations respecting land are fettered with technicalities of feudal origin, which make the proceedings expensive, complicated, and difficult, and which leave it in the power of a pauper-tenant to resist the assertion of the landlord's rights on some technical ground. The injurious effect of a similar difficulty in our own country has been ably pointed out by Mr. Robert Longfield, in the Report to which I have referred. The same point is noticed as an impediment to the granting of leases in Ireland by Messrs. Ferguson and Vance, in the treatise which I quoted in my last paper.

It is a very mistaken notion that legal impediments to the enforcement of a punctual performance of express engagements can be beneficial to the tenants. On the contrary, nothing can be more really injurious to them, as a class, than any such defects in the law as those I am referring to, which almost, I may say, tempt them to disregard their engagements. The result is, as we see both in Scotland and in Ireland, to prevent the granting of leases of very small holdings, and thus honest tenants are deprived of security, because the law holds out inducements to dishonest tenants to violate their engagements.

The suggestions that have been so wisely made in this country for codifying the law respecting the relations of landlord and tenant, and simplifying the proceedings incident to that relation, apply to a considerable extent to Scotland. Indeed, it would be very desirable if an assimilation of the law on this subject were made throughout the three kingdoms. Such an assimilation would lead to a much more complete and perfect code than is likely to be formed for any part of the kingdom. The necessity of considering all the different modes of cultivation and systems