§ *SIR J. JARDINE (Roxburghshire), in moving—"That this House regards with concern the depopulation in the rural districts of the county of Roxburgh and other parts of Scotland, and the injurious results thereof to the national welfare, and considers that remedial legislation is urgently needed,"—said that in the short time at his disposal he would urge first that the statements made in the Motion were true, so far as the whole of Scotland was concerned, but especially so with regard to Roxburghshire, which had become a by-word for 1222 scanty population. The depopulation of the districts was chiefly amongst the class which engaged in agriculture and local work, small farmers and farm servants. Almost within the memory of the oldest inhabitant the countryside was teeming with an agricultural population, but owing to the inclosure system, and the consequent incorporation of the small farms with large ones, that condition of things had disappeared. The process was described in Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Accounts. Nearly the whole of Roxburghshire was now divided: into great estates and large farms, and the classes who produced such men as Robert Burns and James Hogg were fast disappearing from the face of their native land. This result greatly imperilled the military defence of this country, because it was from the stalwart men raised in the countryside that the finest soldiers, were produced. Even the amenities of life had disappeared in these lovely districts. Dykes running up the Cheviots showed that private ownership had invaded the mountain tops. Fishing was made a crime along the pleasant banks of Tweed and Teviot, of Jed and Liddell and every wimpling burn: if you tried to catch a trout, the water-baillies would catch and handcuff you. Even a pleasant walk along the stream was prohibited as a trespass. The Motion he proposed was a remedial measure dealing with the land and the people. An enormous portion of the population affected were farm servants, yet men who had been on the farm for forty years, and who had learnt every operation connected with the industry, who knew well how to reap and sow and plough and mow, who understood horses, sheep, machinery, and all the work of the lambing season, could only obtain as maximum wages 22s. a week. Conditions were made by the farmers which sometimes rendered it impossible for a man to obtain work. For instance, a man might be required to bring with him a woman worker who would receive 11s. a week, and if he had no 1223 wife, daughter, sister, or other relative, whom he could bring, he did not get work for himself. On other occasions they were told to bring a second man to work under them. Sometimes the conditions changed, and he was told there was no more need of the double kind and that if he could not get rid of the second man, both must go. What these people most desired was to have some opportunity, as time went on, to raise themselves in the world, to get a place where a man's widow and children might stay on instead of getting notice to quit the home when the shepherd or ploughman died. There was a growing feeling of bitterness, disappointment, and despair. The chief remedy was small holdings. Now that they saw small holdings being created in England and Wales, the new Act having made every county council set to work so that many thousands of farm servants were already seeking for land, the people of Roxburghshire were most anxious that something should be done for them on the same lines. He begged to move.
MR. DUNDAS WHITE (Dumbartonshire)said he desired to second the Motion. The proposition it contained was fully borne out by the figures of the recent Report on the Decline of the Agricultural Population. So far as Scotland was concerned, the agricultural population had declined by 40,000 in twenty years. There was enormously increased emigration and over-crowding in the towns, and the time, in his opinion, had come when some step should be taken to remedy this great evil.
§ It being Eleven o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.