Page:What are the causes of the distressed state of the Highlands of Scotland?.pdf/13

13 But this argument, if valid, leads to a conclusion which those who use it would be slow to admit. It proves that the system of territorial aristocracy cannot be maintained in any district where the proprietors do not make all the permanent improvements; for, as I have already suggested, there are only three possible arrangements on this subject. If improvements are to be made, the full value of them must be secured to the improver, and the three ways of doing this are:—

First, for the landlord, who has the ownership in the soil, to make all the permanent improvements; and, of course, to retain the property in them.

Secondly, for the tenants to purchase out the landlord's interest, and become peasant-proprietors; and,

Thirdly, for the landlord to secure to the tenant, by contract, full compensation for all the improvements that are unexhausted at the expiration of the term.

Now, if the last plan be, as many endeavour to prove, impracticable, one or other of the former plans becomes inevitable; so that, if we cannot have tenant-right agreements, we must have either improving landlords or peasant-proprietors. My own impression is, that tenant-right agreements are perfectly feasible, if the Scotch and Irish proprietors could only be brought to see their real position, and the absolute necessity that lies upon them to adopt this prudent course.

But if the proprietors generally fail to discharge the first duty incident to property in land; if they fail to secure the production of human food, by adopting wise arrangements for either making the permanent improvements themselves, or enabling the tenants to make them; then the system of peasant proprietorship becomes inevitable, as the only means to provide for progress in agriculture, and to guard against Highland destitution and Irish famine.

This brings me to the last question. How does it happen that there are no peasant proprietors in the Highlands?

The absence of peasant proprietors arises from the strict entails, and the cost of selling land. Until the passing of the recent disentailing Act for Scotland, similar to the disentailing Acts in force in England and Ireland, the greater part of Scotland was under strict entail, and was consequently perfectly inalienable.

In the next place, the cost of selling land in Scotland is very considerable. I made the most careful inquiries on this point, and, without troubling you with the results in detail, I may state generally, that all the impediments to the cheap sale of land which exist in this country exist in Scotland, only in each case in a less degree. The result is, that the cost of making out perfect title to land is less in Scotland than here, but is still so great as to operate as an effectual barrier to the sale of land in small