LORD BROUGHAMbegged their Lordships' attention to a petition signed by 1,200 or 1,300 tenant farmers, corn merchants, and cattle dealers in the county of Kincardine, complaining most justly of the law of Hypothec in Scotland. There the landlord had a right to seize for his unpaid rent not only the crop upon the ground, but after it had been sold and paid for, or to make the banâ fide purchaser of it repay him the price. This law had come before their Lordships in 1830, soon after 882 he (Lord Brougham) entered this House, and a case had been decided on appeal in which Lord Dalhousie was the respondent. His noble Friend had, by the sentence of the Court of Session, been adjudged entitled to obtain his unpaid rent from a corn merchant who had purchased his tenant's crop in the market; he had bought by sample, and not by bulk, and therefore he was held liable to repay the price to the landlord for his unpaid rent, though it was not pretended that he had been aware of the rent being in arrear. This was deemed so intolerable a state of things that his noble Friend, Lord Wynford, and himself, had endeavoured to obtain a change of it, but failed in two Bills they had presented. These petitions now prayed for the amendment of the law, which they represented as the remains of the old state of things in feudal times, when the lord cultivated his land by bondsmen or serfs, and did not let it to tenants.