Page:What are the causes of the distressed state of the Highlands of Scotland?.pdf/9

9 improvements. Indeed, to understand the impediments to the granting of crofter leases, it is necessary to consider carefully the economic conditions on which the success of the Lowland farming system depends. They are the following:—

First, the return for that part of the capital which is necessary to be expended in improvements which do not repay in nineteen years, is fully secured to the landlord (the party who expends it) by the power of charging the inheritance.

Secondly, the return for the capital expended in improvements that repay in a shorter time, is fully secured to the tenant (the party who expends that portion of capital) by the terms of the lease.

Thirdly, the cost of making the lease is insignificant in comparison with the value of the farm.

And, fourthly, the cost of enforcing the covenants in the lease never practically interferes with their enforcement, so that these covenants afford perfect security to the proprietor against any deterioration of his land or of his improvements, and against any failure in the payment of his rent.

Now, in the case of the crofter holdings, the proprietors do not, as we have seen, make the permanent improvements. The short leases would not afford the tenants security for reaping a full return for making them, so that the economic condition necessary to secure the expenditure of capital in such improvements would be wanting, even if these leases were granted. This circumstance, again, would interfere with the fulfilment of the second condition; for the capital expended on a farm, in order to produce an adequate return, must be, if I may use such an expression, symmetrically expended; that is, part must be laid out in the more permanent, and part in the more evanescent improvements. And if the former part of such expenditure be wanting, the latter part cannot be as profitable as it would otherwise be, so that insecurity as to the return for any important part of the expenditure on a farm, really operates as a cause of diminishing the return on the rest of the capital employed.

But the most influential impediments to the granting of crofter leases arise from the third and fourth conditions not being fulfilled with respcetrespect [sic] to crofter holdings. In corroboration of this view, I may mention that the managers of the M'Kenzie estate at Gairloch, where the proprietor has done more to improve croft cultivation than has been effected in any other part of Scotland, have given two reasons for not granting crofter leases. The first of these is the cost of the leases, the second is the cost, delay and difficulty, under the Scotch law, of enforcing the covenants where the holdings are of small value.

Now to the first of these causes, it is obvious that, in the case of the large and valuable holdings in the Lothians and other im-