Page:What are the causes of the distressed state of the Highlands of Scotland?.pdf/8

8 render the number of distinct buildings to be erected, and the number of separate pieces of drainage to be executed, very great in proportion to the sum to be expended. Hence the cost, trouble, and risk in superintending the expenditure of £1,000 on one hundred crofter holdings, is infinitely greater than the cost of similar superintendence in the expenditure of the same sum in the erection of one farm-stead. It is also much more difficult for a proprietor to watch that these one hundred buildings are kept in repair, than to watch the state of the one large structure.

In the second place, from the rugged character of the Highlands, the crofter holdings must be scattered along valleys and mountain sides, and must be at a great distance from each other; and, on account of the difficulty of communication, the hills to be climbed, and the lakes and rivers to be crossed, they are necessarily inaccessible. Hence, the natural parties to effect improvements on such holdings are not a staff of labourers employed by the landlord to go from holding to holding, but the occupiers themselves. This view is corroborated by the fact, that the system of peasant proprietorship is peculiarly successful in mountainous countries like Switzerland. In truth, the division of labour cannot be carried to the same degree in such districts as in those countries where the great extent of arable surface allows of the existence of large capitalist farmers, with labourers collected in towns and villages. These physical considerations, as well as the number of the holdings, increase the expense of supervision on the part of the proprietor.

In the third place, the nature of the buildings and improvements required on these Highland farms are of a ruder, simpler, and less uniform description than the improvements in very fertile lowland districts. The small value of the land, when cultivated to its best, would not repay any very great outlay in costly buildings.

In the last place, the cost and trouble of proving an expenditure in such numerous small improvements, so as to establish a charge on the inheritance, would be much greater than the expense of similar proof in the case of a few large holdings, when the whole work could be done by contract. The teachings of Adam Smith, that improvements are more likely to be made by tenants than by landlords, is strictly true with respect to small holdings; and hence it happens that the power to charge the inheritance for permanent improvements, which, as we have seen, works extremely well in the large farm districts of Scotland, entirely fails when applied to crofter holdings.

We have next to consider why the Highland proprietors do not grant leases to the crofters. In answer to this question, I may observe, that the success of the leasing system is intimately connected with the practice of the landlords making all the