virtue of similar titles to those under which other landlords held their land-that is, by charter. These lands, part of the 'common good,' as burghal property is called in Scotland, have long been managed on the same principles as land belonging to private owners, except that the law has required as essential, in order to prevent corruption and jobbery, that burgh lands should only be let or feued at the highest rent or feu duty obtainable by public auction-a difference between the operation of private ownership and ownership by public bodies which self-styled friends of the farmer would do well to recognise.

It is curious to find how strongly the spirit of monopoly, or what we should now call Protection, entered into the policy of the old Royal burghs. They claimed their exclusive trading rights under charters from the Crown, and claimed them over a very considerable area outside the burgh bounds. Yet new towns were constantly and successfully competing with them; and the lords under whom they claimed, either as burghs of regality or of barony, were constantly engaged in the support of the rights and interests of the growing communities. In 1691 the Convention of Royal Burghs appointed a committee to investigate their position. The Royal burgh of Renfrew complains that within its precincts no less than nine new burghs of barony or regality are doing a bigger trade than itself. Among these were Paisley, Port Glasgow, Gourock, and Greenock; which last place, indeed, was already doing a very great 'trade, both foreign and inland, particularly prejudicial to 'the trade of Glasgow.' It is a curious fact mentioned by the Duke of Argyll, that when James Watt, the future inventor of the new steam-engine, came to settle in Glasgow, the Guild of Glasgow Hammermen took alarm, and declared that from the competition of this interloper the whole community would suffer skaith.' The man, accordingly, whose discoveries were destined to raise Glasgow to be one of the greatest cities of the world, was actually driven from her burghal precincts, and had to take refuge within the bounds ' of the University.'

'Within that sanctum this patient and laborious mind wrought out the great problem on which its heart as well as its intellect was set. It thought and pondered, weighed and measured, and tried and tried again, until at the last the moment of inspiration came, and one of the most tremendous agencies in the material world became tractable as a little child. It was tamed, yoked, and bound to every variety of human service-an immense contribution indeed, not only to the

common good of Glasgow, but to the common good of all mankind.'

At length, however, individual enterprise prevailed against all the restrictions old customs tended to rivet on the people; and in matters of industry and commerce, as in the management of land, it was found best to trust men to fight their own battles, either against dangerous rivals or natural difficulties, according to their own lights and in their own way.

But

The earliest improvers of the land were the landowners themselves, almost the only capitalists at the time, and certainly the only capitalists willing to risk their money in attempting experiments by no means sure of success. as time went on a class of tenant farmers arose, having themselves ample knowledge, sufficient capital, and technical skill. Farming became more elaborate and scientific, and greater preparations were made by the landlords in letting their farms to equip them with the necessary requirements, for in Scotland it became the universal practice for the landowner to supply all such accommodation with the land itself. For all these advantages the tenant pays rent. Rent is the price of hire, whatever the thing hired; and though the word is usually applied with reference to the hire of land or houses or mines or fishings, it is in principle the same as regards the hire of horses or carriages or other moveables. • What

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we pay for when we hire anything is the exclusive use or possession of it for a time. And the price we pay for this exclusive use is paid to the man who himself possesses 'it and has the power of lending it' (vol. ii. p. 289). How the owners acquired this power in many cases we have already seen. Over the whole of Scotland every morsel of land which is owned or hired for the exclusive use of any man is held by him in virtue of the rights of predecessors in 'title dating from before the times of Malcolm Canmore, or from the years of conquest that were closed at Bannockburn.'

It is the sentiment of ownership, rather than the expectation of pecuniary profit, that has inspired more than half the reclamation that has been accomplished in Scotland. The Duke of Argyll's experience is the same as that of many other landowners, and he declares that the outlay upon land which he has converted from bog and waste into fruitful cornfields has often been far beyond-sometimes forty and fifty times beyond the capital value of the land as it stood when 'he began.' But great operations of this kind are of course few as compared with the continuous reclamation and improvement which have been going on for generations. Such

work, for instance, as the mere redrainage of old cultivated land cannot be thoroughly done in the West Highlands at present prices at less than from 10l. to 127. an acre, and this alone is frequently more than twenty years' purchase of the 'previous rent.' Expenditure as large has been devoted to building farm houses, farm steadings, and cottages. Even the most careless eye can hardly fail to notice in most parts of Scotland that farm buildings are practically new. When farmers in later years have offered rents for farms, it has been on the condition of their being provided with new houses and accommodation for themselves and their stock. It is not too much to say that the farm houses and farm buildings over large districts of Scotland have mostly been built within recent years. The quaint old picturesque farm house and farm yard, with its tile roof and antiquated windows and chimneys, so common in the rural parishes of England, is unknown across the Border. There farming has been a business and a trade for several generations of farmers, and they have rightly insisted that the machinery and equipments with which they should carry it on should be the best which modern knowledge and skill could place at their command. At the same time the standard of comfort has risen. In the Lothians the cottage of the farm bailiff or steward is often much better than the farm house of earlier days, whilst the farm house sometimes compares favourably with many a small country house of a landed proprietor. The 'general result is that the capital represented by ownership in Scotland is seldom less than from forty to fifty years' rental, and is very often a great deal more' (vol. ii. p. 304). The improvements which a tenant can make upon his farm must necessarily be greatly due to services which he did not contribute.

He is trading on the capital, on the previous improvements, and on the ancient ownership of other men. Yet there are politicians and economists who recommend that a tenant who builds a new piggery, or a new silo, at the cost of some fraction of a year's rent, should be allowed to deprive owners of the rights which flow from centuries of tenure and of outlay, by selling the occupancy which has been lent to them for a time upon stipulated conditions.'

The Duke of Argyll closes his book by referring to the work which has been done for their country and for the world by men of Celtic race, who have moved out from their native hills and glens and entered boldly into the full stream of the activities and efforts of the time. The Highlanders in coming south have often been merged to all appearance

with those among whom they settled. Yet it is a great mistake to suppose that the blood and the race is confined to those who have stayed at home and speak the Gaelic tongue. The facility with which Highlanders have often adopted a new name, when they have changed their residence, serves often to conceal their true origin. David Livingstone, whom the Duke of Argyll considered an example of the purest Celtic type, was, in spite of his Lowland name, the grandson of a McLeay who had migrated from the island of Ulva to the mainland at the end of last century, and who had adopted the name of Livingstone instead of that which he previously bore.

Highland race is

'The larger and more cultivated part of the spread over the wide dominions of the British Crown. many sources of our Imperial strength and wealth. of Scotland is full of it. services have always been full of it. The army and navy have had abundant reason to be proud of it. It was trusted by the Bruce in the thickest of the fights he fought. But its whole pride, and aim, and object must continue to be those which that great king promoted— the object of living and working in harmony with the other elements which have built up the Scottish nation, and in obedience to those natural and moral laws which are the only solid foundation of all human institutions. The progress that Scotland made after union with England was a progress without a parallel in any of the older nations of the world. Yet that progress was not due to anything she derived from England in the way of laws and institutions These were all her own. She kept them at the union, and guarded them with a noble, because a grateful, care. We were jealous about them, not from any narrow or provincial feeling, but because our fathers had told us of the noble works done in their days, and in the old times before them. The one great benefit which Scotland did owe to the last and happiest of her many unions was nothing more than access to larger fields of exercise, to wider openings of opportunity. She rose to the immense prospects of this new horizon because of the mind and character which had been developed under the long discipline and through the fiery trials of her own stormy history. The wonderful start she made in the race of intellectual and industrial life was due to that history, to the older unions effected during it, to the doctrines it had embodied, to the energies it had developed, to the great principles of jurisprudence which had worked under the sanction and with the authority of laws. Scotland, therefore, at the union did not break with her own past. On the contrary, she kept it and cherished it as the richest contribution she could make to the growth of one great empire, and to the polity of one United Kingdom. Let her keep it still, and always in the same spirit, and with the same great end in view.'

It is one of the The Low country The colonies are full of it. The Indian

The Duke of Argyll has given us a most interesting work.

VOL. CLXV. NO. CCCXXXVIII.

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Some readers may perhaps consider that in certain portions of it the zeal of an advocate of a cause is more conspicuous than that spirit of impartial inquiry which should characterise a philosophic historian. Even so, the advocate has not merely argued his case; he has also called his witnesses and adduced his evidence. Now and again, no doubt, his views run counter to the popular prejudices and popular fallacies of the day. All the more should we welcome the somewhat rare courage which boldly confronts noisy declamation with hard facts, and which calls upon us, before echoing the phrases of loose thinkers,' to think out for ourselves what these phrases mean. After all, it is not in agriculture alone that individual effort and activity of mind and character are required to withstand the pressure which prejudice and ignorance can always bring to bear.

ART. X.-1. Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland): a Bill to make better Provision for the Prevention and Punishment of Crime in Ireland, and for other purposes relating thereto. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, April 1, 1887.

2. Irish Land Law (House of Lords): a Bill to amend the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, and the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1885, and for other purposes connected therewith. Ordered to be printed, March 31, 1887.

3. Ireland in 1887. Published by the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. London and Dublin: 1887.

4. The Liberal Unionist. London: 1887.

IN

N the last number of this journal, we pointed out the line of policy which we expected that the Government would follow during the session then about to commence, and in a remarkable degree our views have proved to be accurate. We predicted a lengthened discussion over the Address in answer to the Queen's Speech; we urged that procedure should be the first care of the Government, and that an effective rule of closure should have precedence; we suggested that a measure dealing with the process of private bill legislation would be promised; and we feared that it might be necessary to strengthen the criminal law in Ireland. We trusted further that the Government would confine itself to rational reform, and postpone any sensational or whirlwind legislation to a more convenient time. Up to this point our