4413. Is there anything else you have got to say?-We all believe, so far as I am aware, that liberty alone will never remedy our case. Even suppose we had liberty, yet if we have no lease of our land, the landlord can do with the land as he pleases, and render our case worse than before.
4414. Then it is a lease that you want?-Yes, a lease of a proper kind; but if the land rent can be raised to any figure the landlord thinks proper, what can a lease do for us, or what can liberty do for us. It cannot remedy our case.
4415. Then what you want is, that the landlord may be prevented from raising his rent, and from turning you out of your farms?- From raising it above measure, or above its real value. Another thing is, that I can be turned out of my land at forty days warning, after I have prepared it for winter.
4416. If you make a bargain for a lease for a certain number of years, as they do in Scotland, then you could not be turned out until that lease expired?-That is what we need, and the land let at a reasonable figure.
4417. But that must depend upon the terms of your own contract?-That may be; but the landlord sees plainly that he may not have the power of the fishing; and if he has full power to rent the land as he pleases, and can lay on the land what should come from the fishing, then that would render our case more desperate still.
4418. Do you mean that you have to pay part of your land rent from the fishing?-Our rents depend solely on the fishing. Some men may have a cow or a horse to sell, to help them to pay their rent; while there may be ten who would have nothing of the kind to sell, except their fish. On Mr. Bruce's property, so far as I am aware, the bulk of the tenants have to pay their rents from their fishing.
4419. Do you mean that your farm does not pay its own rent from the crops which it yields?-Yes; we cannot afford to sell any crop with which to pay our rent. If we were to sell the crop for that purpose, we would be deprived of what we have to live upon. The farms are very small, and we require the whole of the crops for our own use. In some years they have not been sufficient to keep us for half the year.
4420. Then the state of matters is, that you live principally by your fishing, and that your farm is an extra source of employment, or an extra means of [Page 110] living for part of the year?-Yes; some years, when there has been a good crop, it may serve us almost or altogether for the whole of the year; then the fishing pays the rent, and we may have some balance over to help us otherwise. In a poor year I have had experience of it, when our crops could only serve us for six months, and then we had to buy meal for the other six months. In that case the fishing had to do the best it could to pay both the land rent and the meal.
4421. Then your difficulty is, that you are both fishermen and farmers?-Yes; if the land was let at its real value, at what it was actually worth, and we had a lease of it, and were allowed at the same time to make the best of our fishing, we all believe that our circumstances would be improved.
4422. Suppose that were the case, there would then be no obligation upon you to deal at any shop, but you could go where you liked for your goods?-Yes; and we could make the best of our fishing at the same time.