THE SCOTCH FARMER.

Evening Star, Issue 11251, 26 May 1900, Page 6

THE SCOTCH FARMER.

The following extracts from a letter written by a Dunedin gentleman to a friend in town are founded upon the former's observations 1 during a tour throughout Scotland and Ireland. They are not new to those who know, but they will be new to those whose oars have been deafened with the advocates of the clamors of the one, and mislead by the comparative silent submission of the other. The writer says:

The land laws of Scotland are most iniquitous. Compared with them those of Ireland represent, nearly a hundred years’ advance. In Ireland the tenant has an inalienable right to bis farm so long as his rent is paid, and even were he to be excelled for non-payment of rent, compensation must be given him for his improvements and the market, value of his tenant right to the farm. A Board of Royal Commissioners refixes his rent every five years. Ho can bequeath his farm to whomsoever he chooses, or sell his tenant right to it. Here in Scotland, us in England, a fanner leases a farm for a term of yours. Let him improve it in any way during his tenure, on the renewal of his lease the rent is raised in consequence. Let. a farmer ip. Aberdeenshire, in his odd times, “ bring in” a field or two from the moorland hills which "form a part, of his farm, on the regranting of a lease to him a sum of £5 to £7 will bo added to his annual rent to reward Iris industry and spur him to renewed improvements. No doubt, where a kindly feeling ,'xists between laird and tenant, improvements are carried on by both in mutual understanding, but. in the end the tenant has always to pay for such improvements, and the right, of the laird is sometimes tyrannically exercised. Such a state prevents the farmer from doing what he cau to improve his place, causes him to regard the farmhouse as but a temporary residence, and engenders, in spite of native thrift, a, habit of carelessness for comfort and disinclination to beautify, and even for order and neatness. The cottar population has well-nigh vanished from the Aberdeen glens and stratlis; the small crofters are following the cottars into the towns or across the sea to lands where lairds are unknown, and the farmers of to-day, with increasing demands for higher wages, are forced to take to large farms and the use of machinery.