LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGHMy Lords, I desire to present a petition 678 against the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill from a meeting of agriculturists held in Edinburgh on 8th July. At the same time I beg to give notice that, on the Motion for the Second Reading of the Bill to-morrow, I propose to move, "That this House, while anxious to encourage the formation of small holdings under reasonable conditions and to consider favourably such Amendment of the Acts relating to the tenure of crofter holdings as experience may have shown to be necessary, deprecates the indiscriminate and universal extension of the crofting system; sees no justification for establishing in Scotland a Land Court on the Irish model; and declines to proceed with a Bill which introduces into the agricultural districts of Scotland the evils which are inseparable from any system of divided ownership in land,"