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Page 55
Still more wretched is the condition of the cottars and squatters. The
latter are in some places numerous and have taken up considerable
portions of land formerly used as common, thus interfering with the
rights of the crofters. They appropriate land and possess and pasture
stock, but pay no rent, obey no control, and scarcely recognize any
authority. The dwellings of this class and of some of the poorer
crofters are wretched in the extreme. A single apartment, with walls of
stone and mud, a floor of clay, a thatched roof, no windows, no chimney,
one low door furnishing an entrance for the occupants and a means of
ventilation and of escape for the smoke which rolls up black and thick
from the peat fire, furniture of the rudest imaginable sort, the
inhabitants--the human beings, the cows, the pigs, the sheep, and the
poultry--all crowded together in the miserable and filthy hut, make up a
picture which the most romantic and poetic associations can hardly
render pleasing to one accustomed to the comforts and refinements of
modern civilization. Of course many of the crofters live in greater
comfort, and some of the cottages are by no means unattractive. But the
Royal Commissioners say that the crofter's habitation is usually "of a
character that would imply physical and moral degradation in the eyes of
those who do not know how much decency, courtesy, virtue, and even
refinement survive amidst the sordid surroundings of a Highland hovel."
An Englishman who, on seeing these "sordid surroundings," was disposed
to compare the social and moral condition of the people to "the
barbarism of Egypt," was told that if he would ask one of the crofters,
in Gaelic or English, "What is the chief end of man?" he would soon see
the difference.
With such a history, such traditions, grievances, conditions, and
hardships, it is not strange that the crofter should be ready to join an
agitation that promised a remedy. Some of his grievances and claims have
been so similar to those of the Irish tenant that the legislation which
followed the violent agitation in Ireland has led him to hope for
relief-measures similar to those enacted for the Irish tenantry. The
Irish Land Act of 1870 recognized the tenant's right to the permanent
possession of his holding and to his improvements, by providing that on
being turned out by his landlord he should have compensation for
disturbance and for his improvements. It did not, however, secure him
against the landlord's so increasing his rent as practically to
appropriate his improvements and even force him to leave his holding
without any compensation. The Land Act of 1881 secured his interests by
establishing a court which should fix a fair rent, by giving him a right
to compensation for disturbance and for his improvements, and by
allowing him to sell his interests for the best price he can get for
them. It also enabled him to borrow from the government, at a low rate
of interest, three-fourths of the money necessary to purchase his
landlord's interest in the holding. This legal recognition and guarantee
of the Irish tenant's interests have led the crofter to hope that his
claims, based on better grounds, may also be conceded.
The changes recently made in the land laws of England and Scotland, and
the activity of the advocates of further and more radical changes, have
increased this hope. Progressive English statesmen have long looked with
disfavor upon entails and settlements, and there have been a number of
enactments providing for cutting off entails and increasing the power of
limited owners. The last and most important of these, the Settled
Estates Act, passed in 1882, gives the tenant for life power to sell any
portion of the estate except the family mansion, and thus thoroughly
undermines the principle upon which primogeniture and entails are
founded. Much land which has hitherto been so tied up that the limited
owners were either unable or unwilling to develop it can now be sold and
improved. New measures have been proposed to increase still further the
power of limited owners and to make the sale and transfer of land easier
and less expensive. Many able statesmen are advocates of these measures.
Mr. Goschen in a recent speech at Edinburgh urged the need of a
land-register by which transfers of land might be made almost as cheaply
and easily as transfers of consols. By such an arrangement, it is held,
many farmers of small capital will be enabled to buy their farms, and
the land of the country will thus be dispersed among a much larger
number of owners. There has also been a very marked tendency to enlarge
the rights and the authority of the tenant farmer. The Agricultural
Holdings Act of 1883 gives the tenant a right to compensation for
temporary and, on certain conditions, for permanent improvements, and
permits him in most cases, where he cannot have compensation, to remove
fixtures or buildings which he has erected, contrary to the old doctrine
that whatever is fixed to the soil becomes the property of the landlord.
The landlord's power to distrain for rent is greatly reduced: formerly
he could distrain for six years' rent, now he can distrain only for the
rent of one year, and he is required to give the tenant twelve instead
of six months' notice to quit. The tenant is therefore more secure than
formerly in the possession of his farm and in spending money and labor
in making improvements that will render it more productive. Other
changes are proposed, which will give him still more rights, greater
freedom in the management of the farm, and additional encouragement to
adopt the best methods of farming and invest his labor and money in
improvements. Many of the land reformers advocate the adoption of
measures similar to those that have been enacted for Ireland. It has for
some time been one of the declared purposes of the Farmers' Alliance to
secure a system of judicial rents for the tenant farmers of England. An
important conference lately held at Aberdeen and participated in by
representatives of both the English and Scottish Farmers' Alliances
adopted an outline of a land bill for England and Scotland, providing
for the establishment of a land court, fixing fair rents, fuller
compensation for improvements, and the free sale of the tenant's
interests.
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