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Mr. Lockhart, although you are only seventeen years old, you seem to have a pretty good
understanding of the critical relationship between the production of the land, the
survival of your tenants and the payment of their rent -- and, hence, the survival of you,
the landlord. You depend on your tenants for rental income and some labour services. And
your tenants' sub-tenants each depend on your tenants for a small piece of ground to
supply their own table with food. But what about when the crops are poor? Please give us
an example from your limited experiences as Laird of Carnwath estate in Lanarkshire,
Scotland.
My tenants have sent me an address representing their sad
condition, caused by a particular blasting and mildew which has wasted their crop as well
as their neighbours. Besides this, the crop of 1696 was generally bad throughout the
kingdom. They have had this address attested by many of the ministers of the Lanark and
Biggar Presbyteries, and they crave an abatement [reduction] of that year's rent, as has
been granted by other masters to their tenants who did not suffer as much...
I realise the truth of their complaint and that the state of my tenants is such
that without an abatement most of them will not be able to continue their holdings, and so
will embezzle everything they can lay hands on which should go towards the payment of
their rent, for they will be without any hope of ever getting it all paid off. Whereby I
shall be a far greater loser than I would be if I gave them sufficient abatement to
encourage them to set to work again with some hope that they'll be able to live under me
on their holdings. Besides, it may be that the law would allow them more than I propose to
give them. Therefore I desire the consent of your Lordship and of Mr. Montgomery
[Lockhart's other guardian] to grant to my tenants an abatement of half their rent for the
year 1696, as others have done before me, seeing it's against all equity that when the
ground fails to produce its increase some consideration should not be given to those who
work it. When they have got this abatement they will still be losers, but all their losses
can be made up
George Lockhart to his guardian, Sir James Scougall of Whitehill, in
February 1698 (From
the Scottish History Society, Letters of George Lockhart of Carnwath,
p. xiv-xv, 1-2.)
Let me make sure that I understand this. "When the ground fails to produce its
increase", it was evidently felt that, constitutionally, it was unfair and, indeed,
unwise, for the farmer to suffer alone. Under feudalism, the land was the foundation of
the socio-economic structure and the basis for the national constitution. All in the
late-feudal hierarchy had some rights to the produce of the land and all had to share in
the losses. "Farm subsidies" such as those you propose were common-place in
times of crop failure. In essence, the survival of everyone on your estate depends very much on
the land itself.
From When the Ground Fails -- An Economic Watershed
(SHR V9#6)
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