In portraying the progress of agricultural improvement, Mr Stuart discovers the origin of the bothy and bondager systems. The throwing two or three farms into one, and the gradual decay of the cot-houses, and the aversion of the proprietor to build new ones, from a mistaken economy, originated both modes of accommodating farm-servants. But if such were the causes of the evil, its cure is self-evident. We have only to retrace our steps, and we will recover the position which we have abandoned. It took, however, half a century to develop the evil, and not in a day can we hope to see the remedy accomplished. In building more cottages, then, you take the sure way of mitigating the evils of both systems; and by proceeding in this work, if you do not ultimately exterminate the evil, you will so circumscribe and diminish it that it must become all but innocuous. The practice of enlarging farms has gone far enough, but if the expense of their subdivision were not intolerable, we would not in this item undo what we have done. There can be no doubt that our large farmers have been the great improvers; not only have they led the way in improving the cultivation of the soil and the stock of the country, but they have been the parties who have introduced to public notice the new manures, and the new and better implements of husbandry, and to them we now look as indispensable and powerful auxiliaries in elevating the social condition of the labourers. On the large farm, all that is wanted is a proportionate increase of cottages to accommodate the staff of agricultural servants, with a few houses on the outskirts of the farm for jobbers and day-labourers, whose assistance, with that of their families, may be got at a busy season on the farm.
At all times, and in all places, and by all sorts of people, the bothy is condemned. Mr Stuart condemns it, and laments the evils which it originates, and the habits which it induces, and the immoralities which it cherishes; but we are sorry to think that he writes so hopelessly about the possibility of its extinction. We would have been better pleased had he pronounced its doom, and had he proclaimed against it, in unmistakable accents, a war of extermination, gradual but sure, and inexorable. It merits nothing but hearty and unhesitating condemnation. We are well acquainted with bothy economics, and we never knew but one that was even decently conducted. Mr Stuart seems to think the evil necessary and irremovable, and that the only thing left to the philanthropist is to mitigate its horrors. But why so? The bothy system is partial and local. There are large provinces of the kingdom where it is totally unknown. We have the ocular demonstration, then, that it is not indispensable. But Mr Stuart says, that in escaping Charybdis, you sail the good ship Agriculture straight into the boiling quicksand of Syrtis—that, the bothy abandoned, you irretrievably encounter the evils of the bondager system. We are humbly of opinion, however, that our excellent friend somewhat overstates the evils of this latter system. There are inconveniences and disadvantages connected with it, but these are not for a moment to be compared with the discomforts, and with the temptations to nocturnal rambling and loose living, with which the bothy system is so beset. The bondager system does not affect young ploughman lads in the slightest degree; it is limited to young women, and to them the system is the same as domestic service in the farmer’s house, when field-work is associated with that service. But Mr Stuart seems to confound the bondager with the cottage system, while in reality they have no necessary connection. There are two bugbears in the way of abolishing the bothy—the one the landlords, and the other the tenants. The landlord is alarmed at the expense of building the necessary cottages. This will be got over. The tenant is alarmed at the expense of maintaining the ploughman in the cottage when built—a most remarkable mistake. But so it is that, be-north the Forth, many farmers, from long habit, and from ignorance of the cottage system as it exists in the Border counties, have become so wedded to the bothy, that in accomplishing its abolition we expect more resistance from them than from landlords. The model bothy, in mere material accommodation, will effect nothing unless it has separate apartments, furnished with fire and light, and other necessary appliances; and if it be so, where will be its superior economy to either landlord or tenant, when contrasted with the expense of a separate cottage? Abrogate the bothy system entirely, for otherwise moralists may lament in vain, and parents bewail the ruined virtue of their children.
Considering apparently the system too firmly rooted to admit of eradication, Mr Stuart strenuously inculcates the instant improvement of the bothy accommodation. But if he succeeds, will he not have stereotyped the bothy as a permanent part of the economy and constitution of the farm; and what, then, has been achieved? The physical discomforts of the bothy will have in a good measure disappeared, but the place is not disinfected of the moral contagion which the system communicates. Let half-a-dozen of ploughman lads be associated in a bothy, and however tidy and snug and commodious the apartments, yet when their age and circumstances are remembered—when it is considered that they are without a head, to control, counsel, and direct them, that each is his own master—we confess that to us it seems chimerical to expect that any desirable measure of decency, or sobriety, or order, will prevail within the walls of the bothy. It is in vain to tell a well-disposed lad that he can escape the pollution of a wicked associate in the bothy, by retiring to his own apartment. How can he sit there on a winter evening (winter is the season when bothy wickedness takes its swing), unaccommodated as it is either with fire or light? We fear, therefore, that the “model bothy” even would not arrest or extinguish the moral mischief that emanates from this system. It is remarkable that the speakers at the Edinburgh meetings do not say that they contemplate the improvement of the bothy system. Their resolution to encourage the multiplication of suitable cottages for the labourers on the farm, they saw, involved in due time the extinction of the bothy system. Moreover, we fancy that neither the Duke of Buccleuch nor the Marquis of Tweeddale has a single bothy upon their estates, unless one for the journeymen gardeners in the vicinity of their residences. Once erect a sufficiency of cottages, and the unmarried lads will find a sister, or aunt, or some female relative to keep house for them. Having such an object before them, they will be taught habits of economy, and will save money, that they may be ready to furnish a cottage. Once in it, they have a home and property, and will become attached to their situation. The bothy turns ploughmen into nomads, and gives them restless, undomestic, and migratory habits. Erect a sufficiency of cottages, and the bothy will die a natural death. No proprietor or tenant will erect or maintain a bothy for a solitary ploughman, who happens to have no female friend who can cook his food and keep his cottage. Infallibly he will find other accommodation. The boy, to whom the bothy is a very school of corruption, ought to live in family with the master, and it should be the master’s duty to watch over his morals, and to aid in some manner in his education. If he is a parent, let him say how he would like his own boy, when he leaves the paternal roof, to be neglected, tempted, corrupted.
Mr Stuart quotes from Mr Laing’s book on Norway a description of the Norwegian borststue or bothy, which is commodious and comfortable, and well supplied with all conveniences; and then he asks, “Now, I would hold such to be a model bothy; and cannot the farming in Scotland afford to give what it affords to give in Norway?” No doubt of it, provided you demonstrate that the bothy is indispensable; but to that premise we demur. Mr Laing communicates nothing to us of the moral effects of the borststue, which would be modified by the social habits of the people, and by the degree of kindly intercourse subsisting between master and servant. But in fact the example of Norway, neither in the matter of cottages nor bothies, is truly applicable to our country. In Norway the cottage is a loghouse, and costs nothing but the nails and the window-glass, while every Norwegian knows enough of loghouse-carpentry to erect a cottage for himself. With regard to the borststue, there is a necessity for it in Norway that does not exist here. The outdoor farm-work, which meets with but partial interruptions in our climate, is at an absolute standstill in Norway for six months of the year, from the severity of a protracted winter. The result is, that the outdoor work must be accomplished during a few weeks in spring, and of course a more numerous staff of servants must be maintained than with us; for, from the military and passport system prevailing in Norway, it is impossible to summon in an additional supply of workers to suit the emergency. The tenant-farmer is thus more dependent on the agricultural labourers; and we believe that there prevails in Norway more of that friendly interchange of sympathy and of kindness between master and servant than now unhappily characterises our social condition, which, nevertheless, sweetens all toil, and turns aside the poisoned arrow of temptation, and plucks the sting from suffering, whether experienced in Scottish bothy or Norwegian borststue. For ourselves, we have only one prescription for the bothy system, and that is, raze it. The system is too pregnant with all moral evil to be temporised with. We cannot consent to any parley, to negotiate for delay, and to write protocols anent its possible improvement. We are almost certain that the minister of Oathlaw agrees with us, but that he has thought it prudent to soften his voice when speaking of the bothy, in the fear that it would alarm his auditors at the revolutionary extent of his demands. But now that he has caught the ear of the noble and the good of the land, and awakened in generous hearts so magnanimous a response, let the lute become a trumpet in his hand, and let him blow a blast so loud and clear as shall scatter this disgrace of Scottish agriculture to the winds of heaven.
Most earnestly do we press upon our readers that our Scottish peasantry, and agricultural labourers, and common ploughmen, are highly deserving of consideration and kindness, and of every attempt that can be made to increase their comforts and to ameliorate their moral and social condition. There is an incredible and most criminal ignorance not only among the higher, but among the middle classes of society, regarding at once the habits and hardships of this important class of the community. The newspaper paragraphist, in his select vocabulary, describes the ploughman as a clown, a clodpole, a lout. That smart draper, with the exquisitely-tied cravat and his inimitably arranged hair, all redolent of musk, smiles complacently when he sees John the hind rolling along the pavement on his huge hobnailed boots, and considers him the very impersonation of stolidity. John’s dress is appropriate, however, to his calling, and to see the draper in pumps and silk stockings floundering through a new-ploughed field, or picking his steps daintily through a feeding-byre, where the musk must yield to the ammonia, would, we fancy, be a phenomenon not less provocative of laughter. Nothing is so ridiculous as the very prevalent idea that our Scottish agricultural labourers are a stupid race. They are shrewd, sagacious, and intelligent about their own business; and because they are so, they are continually being drafted away to England and Ireland. The employments of a common ploughman are various, and of a nature calculated to cultivate his powers of observation and of thought. Mr Stephens, after describing the extent of observation, of judgment, and of patience, required in a good ploughman, adds—“To be so accomplished implies the possession of talent of no mean order.”—Book of the Farm, vol. i. p. 163. Talent necessary for a ploughman! exclaims the incredulous and amazed citizen, and fancies that the author must speak ironically. Nay; he never wrote soberer truth in his lifetime, and in your ignorance you wonder.
There is another reason why not only the comforts, but why the moral and intellectual powers of the agricultural labourer should be cared for. The common ploughman has committed to his trust property which, on a very moderate computation, may be valued at £100. This property, of a nature so likely to receive injury from carelessness and inattention, is daily in his hands, and under his charge, and at his mercy. We need scarcely add, too, how deeply he may in other respects injure his employer, as, for instance, by the imperfect ploughing or careless sowing of a field. To what common servant, in any sphere of life, is property so valuable so exclusively intrusted? It is plain that a party so confided in, as a ploughman must be, ought not to have his sense of responsibility and of moral obligation blunted and impaired by barbarous neglect. Hitherto our agricultural labourers have not occupied themselves with discussing “the rights of labour and the duties of capital.” But if landlords and tenants are resolved to consider the whole management of land as a mere matter of commerce, we cannot see why these operatives should not be led to philosophise as well as others. The labourer may apply in all equity that principle to his own case which the landlord and tenant are severally applying to theirs. The severance between employer and employed has of late been developed to an extent never before witnessed in any age, and it threatens, at this moment, to throw a terrific chasm athwart the whole structure of society. Not only among mill-masters and men, but among many other classes very differently circumstanced, have we witnessed combination and counter-combination, and their disastrous consequences. A slight agrarian grumbling might possibly do good; and, from all that we can learn, there is a sulky discontent slumbering in many an honest fellow’s bosom, that could easily be fanned, by a skilful experimenter, into a visible flame. It will be better, in every respect, to anticipate and ward off the evil. Its causes and its cure have been well expounded by Mr Stuart. But if our agricultural labourers are too patient sufferers to complain, too sensible to imbibe the pestilent doctrines of Messrs Newton and Cowel, and too wide apart to have it in their power to combine, whether for good or for evil—and if, on these accounts, there is no ground for alarm, is it wise, is it kind of you, to take advantage of their peaceful dispositions, and of their powerlessness to unite in proclaiming their wrongs, and in vindicating their rights? There is a remedy within the reach of many of them, and of which they are silently availing themselves. They can emigrate. They are doing so quietly, determinedly. They are not absolutely astricti glebæ. The canker of neglect is eating away the ties that bind them to their Fatherland. Multitudes of the best of them have gone, and thousands would follow if they had the means. Emigration, if it proceeds unchecked, will render “strikes” unnecessary, even if we are inclined to consider such things as visionary and impossible among an agricultural population.
They who have not read Mr Stuart’s appeal, may conclude, from the professed object of that Association to which his appeal has conducted, that he has inculcated nothing more than the improvement of existing cottages, and the building of many new ones more commodious and comfortable. His philanthropy, however, is more comprehensive. With an excursive pen he reviews the whole moral, educational, and social characteristics of the agricultural labourer’s condition, and sketches the remedies for its various evils. When, therefore, Mr Stuart merely proposed at the meeting of the 10th January, as the main feature of the proposed Association, the establishment of an office in Edinburgh for the reception of plans and models, and improved fittings and furnishings for cottages, accessible to all inquirers, it seemed to us, retaining as we did a delightful reminiscence of his pamphlet, a most impotent conclusion. He appeared to have descended from the high moral arena into the mortar-tub, and we were in terror lest some journalist, in a slashing leader, should cover his scheme with inextinguishable burlesque. It seemed likewise a mystery to us how there could be such extreme difficulty in erecting a commodious and comfortable cottage, as that an office in our metropolis should be required for the exhibition of right models. It might have looked that, instead of a labourer’s cottage, it was a medieval temple of most intricate composite that was required, and for the conception of which the genius of Scottish architecture was unequal without the aid of unusual patronage. We feared, too, that the Association might be described by some malignant pen as a company of Scottish proprietors resolving to raise the marketable value of their estates by adding to the buildings thereupon. Such silly caricatures might perhaps have been anticipated, and in fact some small sneers were dropped by one or two of the Radical newspapers; but the admirable tone of the speeches at the meeting, when the Association was formed, seemed for the time to have stayed the old hatred of the democratic press towards our landed proprietors. That our readers may understand correctly the intentions and views of “The Association for promoting improvement in the dwellings and domestic condition of agricultural labourers in Scotland,” we recommend to their perusal the report of the committee now published, and which we hope may be widely circulated. The noblemen and country gentlemen composing the Association have combined, not for the purpose of raising their rentals, but for the purpose of improving the domestic condition of the agricultural labourers, by improving their dwellings. They have united together for the purpose of directing attention to the subject, and of encouraging and aiding others in removing an evil which they candidly confess they have hitherto overlooked and neglected. The evil is of long standing and of gigantic dimensions, and it has been felt that the benevolent zeal and efforts of individuals required to be concentred into the potent agency of one national association, to effect its abatement and to work out its final extinction. In the matter of house accommodation for our agricultural labourers, while on many estates a very great deal has been done to improve it, yet very generally over the kingdom it is a notorious fact that no improvement in their dwellings has taken place for the last half-century. One article of furniture in the cottages of our Scottish peasantry has excited the indignation of all but those who repose their weary limbs on it—we refer to the box-bed. The medical faculty time immemorial have denounced it as a very “fever case.” Mr Stuart and his reverend brethren have lamented the stifling insalubrity of the formidable structure. Fine ladies and gentlemen have wondered at the stupid attachment of the Scottish peasant to a dormitory so barbarous. The Duke of Buccleuch has solved the riddle. He tells us, that when he ordered the box-bed to be taken out of the cottage down came the roof! And thus that which has been the stay and support of many a tottering tenement has been most ignorantly condemned. Nor is this all. So very damp and cold are too many of the cottages, that in order to exclude these evils in some measure by night, the box-bed is indispensable during eight months of the year; and we predict that unless comfortable cottages, rightly roofed, lathed, and floored are erected, the box-bed will prove stronger than Mr Stuart, and will retain its hold on the affections of the labourer, upholding at once its own position and the roof of the dwelling that affects to shelter it from the elements. That there is likewise a lack of cottages in our agricultural districts is unquestionable. They have been allowed to decay and disappear, from economical considerations entirely delusive, to an extent extremely prejudicial. The diminished population of our rural parishes proves the fact; and if any one will contrast the census papers of 1841 with those of 1851, which exhibit the number of the inhabited houses in the several counties of Scotland, they will find a demonstration that may probably startle them. The Association takes it for granted that an improved domestic condition will follow in the wake of improved dwellings being given to the poor, and no thoughtful and observing person will doubt this. It has been beautifully said, “Between physical and moral delicacy a connection has been observed, which, though founded by the imagination, is far from being imaginary. Howard and others have remarked it. It is an antidote against sloth, and keeps alive the idea of decent restraint and the habit of circumspection. Moral purity and physical are spoken of in the same language; scarce can you inculcate or command the one, but some share of approbation reflects itself upon the other. In minds in which the least germ of Christianity has been planted, this association can scarce fail of having taken root: scarce a page of Scripture but recalls it.” It is of the very essence of every good system to develop the virtues necessary to its success; and to the humanising influence of a comfortable and commodious cottage, old habits of filthiness and sloth would gradually yield, and would every day become a lessening evil. Such cottages would secure at once the services of the best class of workmen, and thus a mercenary self-interest would find it to its advantage to follow where benevolence had led the way. The influence of example upon the rich, and the influence of superior house-accommodation upon the social condition of the poor, must be gradual. This has been duly contemplated.
It is scarcely necessary, we fancy, to expound this part of the case. It is now pretty generally understood. If, however, any of our readers have not considered this subject, or continue to entertain some lingering doubts regarding the effects of improved house-accommodation upon the social, sanitary, and moral condition of the people, we most anxiously recommend to their perusal Dr Southwood Smith’s “Results of Sanitary Improvement, illustrated by the operation of the metropolitan societies for improving the dwellings of the industrious classes, &c.” The pamphlet costs twopence, and it may take a quarter of an hour to read it; but never, we believe, were statistics ever given to the world so surprising and so encouraging,—matter at once so suggestive of deep thought, and so animating to the aspirations of practical philanthropy. Lord Shaftesbury is at present circulating this most pregnant epitome of the effects of sanitary improvement among the parochial boards of Scotland. It is a most seasonable missive—vindicating the speculations of Mr Stuart, and placing on the basis of demonstration the certainty of the effect of the intended operations of the Duke of Buccleuch’s association. The pecuniary element will be thought our main difficulty, but we are quite satisfied that the tendency is to exaggerate it. Be it remembered that we want no cottages ornées, and (with your leave, Mr Stuart) no model bothies, but merely warm, dry, convenient houses for honest ploughmen to live in. Let wealthy proprietors, if they please, adorn their estates with picturesque villas, crowned with projecting roofs and ornamental chimneys; but the Association over which the Duke of Buccleuch presides does not desire a single sixpence to be spent which will not contribute to the comfort of the cottage. The reformatory change may proceed by degrees, and in no one year need the outlay be serious; but on this part of the subject we refer our readers to the views of Sir Ralph Anstruther, as contained in his speech on the 10th January, and more fully explained in his letter (Courant, January 20th). While the Association professes, in the mean time (and we think wisely and judiciously), to limit its attention to the improvement of the dwellings of agricultural labourers, and thereby to raise their domestic condition, it seems evident that the basis of its operations may be easily extended, and that the benevolent object in view will almost naturally widen that basis. That object is to ameliorate the domestic condition of the labourer; but if other causes as well as that of improved house-accommodation will contribute towards the wished-for amelioration, these, it may be expected, in due time will come to be embraced within the benevolent range of its fostering influence. To prevent misapprehension and remove ignorance, we would respectfully suggest the propriety of the Association instituting a statistical inquiry into the physical, moral, and educational condition of the agricultural labourers of the kingdom. Such statistics would form a valuable supplement to the agricultural statistics collected under the instruction of Mr Hall Maxwell. Information seems necessary to enable the Association rightly to exercise its influence, even in improving the dwellings of the poor. In some parts of the west of Scotland a sort of mud cottage is raised at an expense of £3! and a fit model for one county may be utterly unfit for another. All requisite information we believe could be obtained, by addressing a schedule of inquiry to the parochial clergy, who are manifestly ready to lend their aid. In any event, our landed proprietors cannot well afford to have more “news from the farm” thrust upon them by the spontaneous exertions of volunteer philanthropists. The public, indeed, seem to have been infinitely surprised that our landed proprietors should have been so ignorant of the condition of the dwellings and of the circumstances of the people upon their estates; and the inference is, that there must have been something grievously wrong in the management of their affairs. No man, of course, can expect that the proprietor of a large landed estate should know minutely the condition of every cottage on it, and the discomforts of its poor inhabitant. But the ignorance confessed goes greatly beyond this. It was surely the more immediate duty of the tenant-farmer to have protected his dependants, and to have represented their disadvantages to the proprietor. And what has the factor been doing in the mean time? General Lindsay, at the meeting of the 10th January, in a speech overflowing with admirable feeling, said, that “the factor was afraid of increasing his expenditure.” Quite right; but why was he not afraid, too, of misrepresenting the kindly feelings of his constituent towards the industrious poor upon his estate—of concealing from him knowledge which, if he wished to do his duty, it was indispensable for him to possess—of alienating from him and his house the love and veneration of his people—of rendering his privileges odious now, and of imperilling his position on any coming convulsion of the commonwealth? We have not only now the evil of non-resident proprietors, but, in many cases, the evil of non-resident factors. The door of communication betwixt landlord and tenant is thus effectually shut up; and the poor cottager, who was wont to have access even to “his honour,” finds things so altered that an audience with the factor is become impossible. The accountant is as ignorant as his constituent “of the dwellings and domestic condition of the agricultural labourers,” and thus there is a complete abnegation of all the peculiar duties and responsibilities which Providence has manifestly laid on the owners of land. It is impossible to deny, on the other hand, that very many of the tenant-farmers, imitating the manners of their betters, have become sadly neglectful of the duties which they owe their dependants. To give as little and get as much as he can, is now, in too many cases, the short and simple rubric of that code which guides the landlord in his contract with the tenant. The tenant extends the principle, and looks upon the labour of his ploughman as a mere purchaseable article, that supplements the deficiency of machinery, and is necessary to guide the muscular energies of the horse. With the ploughman, however, the sale of his labour is the sale of himself—the devotion of his sentient nature, with feelings, affections, sympathies, as lively as those of his master, and with a pride and self-esteem as sensitive to unkindness and wrong. It was in every respect seemly that the present movement should originate with the proprietors, for the house-accommodation must plainly be given by them; but now that they have intimated, in so kind words, their good wishes and benevolent intentions, we hope the farmers will consider whether expressions of “repentance” for the past are not due from them as well as from others, and whether works “meet for repentance” should not instantly be undertaken by them. Because the landlord has made his “confession,” it is conceivable that the tenant may now fancy that nothing remains but that he should make a clamorous onset on the laird for more cottages. We hope he will not be unreasonable, but will perceive that he must put his own shoulder to the work, and be prepared to make some sacrifices, and to practice some self-denial. We fear that some of the tenantry require to be instructed, stimulated, and watched in discharging that part of the duty which falls to them in promoting the desired reformation. We are quite of the opinion of the Duke of Buccleuch, that more cottages should not be let with the farm than the number necessary to accommodate the servants requisite for the work of the farm. The other cottagers should rent their holdings immediately from the landlord.
We know no class of workmen who have so few holidays, and so few opportunities for rational recreation, as our ploughmen. They may have the right to go to some annual feeing-market, and out of this solitary feast the poor fellows try naturally to extract as much pleasure as they can, turning the day into a carnival of many-coloured evil. All other classes of workpeople have their occasional holiday—their trip by an excursion-train—the Saturday afternoon, in a slack season, to see friends and kindred; but no such pleasures fall to the ploughman’s lot. In the winter, indeed, he is on “short time,” but what is done to make his evening hours pleasant, profitable, instructive? In the agricultural world we shall certainly have no “lock-out,” and perhaps no “strike,” but it may be wise, at least, to anticipate possible contingencies by acts of kindness and of well-considered indulgence. The yawning gulf betwixt the high and the low of the land is the most ominous evil of these times, and should be bridged over by sympathetic communication whilst it can. The wintry neglect of his superiors is worse to be borne by the labourer than the cold of his miserable cottage. Let us listen to Mr Stuart on an evil which seems to have entered like iron into his kindly soul. Addressing landlords, he says—
“Let their visits and their smile be frequently seen in the house of the poorest cottar, although he be but a hired labourer; for not fifty years ago, that same man would have been a crofter, or a small farmer, waiting on ‘his honour,’ and welcomed by ‘his honour,’ with his rent or his bondage. That he is not so now, is owing more to ‘his honour’s’ change of customs for his own profit, than to the cottar’s own fault, or to the profit of the cottar’s own social position and feelings. Let there be some upmaking, then, for this change, so far as such things can be made up for, not in the shape of money, but in that which his forefathers valued much more than money, and which he will value as highly again, if ‘his honour’ will only but give him time and means whereby he may recover his self-esteem and his proper training; and one of the most powerful and most valued of all these means would, in a little time, be ‘his honour’s’ friendly visits to his humble dwelling.”