the same misery Day-labourers Tradesmen and the lesser Merchants who live in the Country Villages and Towns and thereby influences no less the great Towns and wholesale Merchants makes the Master have a troublesome and ill paid Rent his Lands not improved by inclosure or otherwise but for want of Horses and Oxen sit for labour every where run out and abused The condition of the lesser Freeholders or Heritors as we call them is not much better than that of our Tenants for they have no Stocks to improve their Lands and living not as Husbandmen but as Gentlemen they are never able to attain any Besides this the unskilfulness of their wretched and half-starved Servants is such that their Lands are no better cultivated than those laboured by beggerly Tenants And tho a Gentleman of Estate take a Farm into his own hands yet Servants are so unfaithful or lazy and the Country People such enemies of all manner of inclosure that after having strugled with innumerable difficulties he at last finds it impossible for him to alter the ordinary bad methods whilst the rest of the Country continues in them The places in this Country which produce Sheep and black Cattel have no provision for them in Winter during the Snows having neither Hay nor Straw nor any inclosure to shelter them or the Grass from the cold easterly Winds in the Spring so that the Beasts are in a dying condition and the Grass consumed by those destructive Winds till the warm weather about the middle of June come to the relief of both To all this may be added the letting of Farms in most part of those grazing Countries every year by Roop or Auction But our management in the Countries cultivated by Tillage is much worse because the Tenant pays his Rent in Grain Wheat Barly or Oats which is attended with many inconveniences and much greater disadvantages than a Rent paid in Mony Mony Rent has a yearly balance in it for if the year be scarce all sorts of Grain yield the greater price and if the year be plentiful there is the greater quantity of them to make Mony Now a Rent paid in Corn has neither a yearly nor any balance at all for if a plentiful year afford a superplus the Tenant can make but little of it but if the year be scarce he falls short in the payment of his Corn and by reason of the price it bears can never clear that Debt by the rates of a plentiful year by which means he breaks and contributes to ruin his Master The Rent being altogether in Corn the Grounds must be altogether in Tillage which has bin the ruin of all the best Countries in Scotland The carriage of Corn paid for Rent to which many Tenants are obliged being often to remote places and at unseasonable times destroys their Horses and hinders their labour And the hazard of sending the Corn by Sea to the great Towns endangers the loss of the whole The Master runs a double risque for his Rent from the Merchant as well as the Tenant and the Merchant making a thousand difficulties at the delivering of the Corn if the price be fallen the bargain sometimes ends in a suit at Law The selling of Corn is become a thing so difficult that besides the cheats used in that sort of Commerce sufficient to disgust any honest man the Brewers Bakers and sometimes the Merchants who send it abroad do so combine together that the Gentleman is obliged to lay it up of which the trouble as well as loss is great This causes him to borrow Mony for the supply of his present occasions and is the beginning of most mens Debts We may add to this that by a Rent in Corn a man comes to have one year 1000 l. Rent and the next perhaps but 600 so that he never can make any certain account for his expence or way of living that having one year 1000 l. to spend he cannot easily restrain himself to 600 the next that he spends the same quantity of Corn and in some places where such things are delivered instead of Rent Hay Straw Poultry Sheep and Oxen in a dear as in a plentiful year which he would not do if he was obliged to buy them Now the Tenant in a plentiful year wasts and in a scarce year starves so that no man of any substance will take a Farm in Scotland but every Begger if he have got half a dozen wretched Horses and as many Oxen and can borrow Corn to sow pretends to be a Tenant in places where they pay no other Rent than Corn. I know there are many objections made to what has bin said concerning the advantages which a Rent paid in Mony has above one paid in Corn but certainly they are all so frivolous that every man upon a little restections may answer them to himself For the chief of them are either that the Tenant will squander away Mony when he gets it into his hands or that the Master can get a better price for the Corn by selling it in gross to Merchants in the adjacent Towns or else by sending it to be sold at a great distance To the first I answer that no substantial man will squander away Mony because he has got it into his hands tho such Beggers as we now have for Tenants might be apt to do so And to the second that the hazard of sending Corn from one place of the Kingdom to another by Sea and the prejudice the Tenants suffer from long carriages by Land do in part balance the supposed advantage besides if those wholesale bargains were not so frequently made nor the Corn so often carried to be sold at the great Towns the Merchants would be obliged to send to the Country Markets to buy and the prices in them would rise In short the changing of Mony-rent into Corn has bin the chief cause of racking all the Rents to that excessive rate they are now advanced And upon reflection it will soon appear that the turning of Mony Rents into Rents of Corn has bin the invention of some covetous wretches who have bin the occasion that all Masters now live under the same uneasiness and constant care which they at first out of covetousness created to themselves and all to get as much as was possible from poor Tenants who by such means are made miserable and are so far from improving that they only run out and spoil the Ground ruin their Neighbours by borrowing and at length break for considerable Sums tho at first they were no better than Beggers The method of most other Countries is That all Rents are payed in Mony That Masters receiving a Fine grant long Leases of their Grounds at easy Rents but this supposes the Tenant a man of considerable substance who cannot only give a Fine but has wherewithal to stock and also to improve his Farm But in Scotland no such men are willing to take Farms nor in truth are the Masters
mony he had bestowed upon them especially since the setting them at liberty would only bring a great burden upon the publick Now what I would propose upon the whole matter is that for some present remedy of so great a mischief every man of a certain Estate in this Nation should be obliged to take a proportionable number of those Vagabonds and either employ them in hedging and ditching his Grounds or any other sort of work in Town and Country or if they happen to be Children and young that he should educate them in the knowledg of some mechanical Art that so every man of Estate might have a little Manufacture at home which might maintain those Servants and bring great profit to the Master as they did to the Antients whose revenue by the Manufactures of such Servants was much more considerable than that of their Lands Hospitals and Alms-houses ought to be provided for the sick lame and decrepit either by rectifying old foundations or instituting new And for example and terror three or four hundred of the most notorious of those Villains which we call Jockys might be presented by the Government to the State of Venice to serve in their Gallies against the common enemy of Christendom But these things when once resolved must be executed with great address diligence and severity for that sort of People is so desperately wicked such enemies of all Work and Labour and which is yet more amazing so proud in esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to call slavery that unless prevented by the utmost industry and diligence upon the first publication of any orders necessary for putting in execution such a design they will rather die with hunger in Caves and Dens and murder their young Children than appear abroad to have them and themselves taken into such a kind of service And the Highlands are such a vast and unsearchable retreat for them that if strict and severe order be not taken to prevent it upon such an occasion these Vagabonds will only rob as much food as they can out of the Low-country and retire to live upon it in those Mountains or run into England till they think the storm of our resolutions is over which in all former times they have seen to be vain Nor indeed can there be a thorow reformation in this Affair so long as the one half of our Country in extent of ground is possessed by a People who are all Gentlemen only because they will not work and who in every thing are more contemptible than the vilest slaves except that they always carry Arms because for the most part they live upon robbery This part of the Country being an inexhaustible source of Beggers has always broke all our measures relating to them And it were to be wished that the Government would think sit to transplant that handful of People and their Masters who have always disturbed our peace into the Low-Country and people the Highlands from hence rather than they should continue to be a perpetual occasion of mischief to us 'T is in vain to say that whatever People are planted in those Mountains they will quickly turn as savage and as great Beggers as the present Inhabitants for the Mountains of the Alps are greater more desert and more condemned to snows than those of the Highlands of Scotland which are every where out by Friths and Lakes the richest in Fishing of any in the world assording great conveniences for transportation of Timber and any other Goods and yet the Alps which have no such advantages are inhabited every where by a civiliz'd industrious honest and peaceable People but they had no Lords to hinder them from being civilized to discourage industry incourage thieving and to keep them Beggers that they might be the more dependent or when they had any that oppressed them as in that part of the Mountains that belongs to the Swiss they knock'd them on the head Let us now compare the condition of our present Vagabonds with that of Servants under the conditions which I have proposed and we shall see the one living under no Law of God Man or Nature polluted with all manner of abominations and tho in so little expectation of the good things of another Life yet in the worst condition of this and sometimes starved to death in time of extraordinary want The other tho sometimes they may fall under a severe Master who nevertheless may neither kill mutilate nor torture them and may be likewise restrained from using them very ill by the Magistrate I mention'd are always sure to have Food Clothes and Lodging and have this advantage above other men that without any care or pains taken by them these necessaries are likewise secured to their Wives and Children They are provided for in sickness their Children are educated and all of them under all the inducements encouragements and obligations possible to live quiet innocent and virtuous Lives They may also hope if they shew an extraordinary affection care and sidelity in the service of their Master that not only they and their Families shall have their intire freedom but a competency to live and perhaps the Estate of the Master intrusted to their care Now if we will consider the advantages to the Nation by the one and the disadvantages arising from the other sort of men we shall evidently see that as the one is an excessive burden curse and reproach to us so the other may inrich the Nation and adorn this Country with publick works beyond any in Europe which shall not take the like methods of providing for their Poor This Proposal I hope may be a remedy not only to that intolerable plague of idle Vagabonds who infest the Nation but by providing a more regular maintenance for them go a great way towards the present relief of other poor People who have bin oppressed by them That which follows is calculated to remove the principal and original cause of the Poverty which all the Commons of this Nation lie under as well as those straitning difficulties in which men of Estates are by our present method of Husbandry inevitably involved The causes of the present poverty and misery in which the Commonalty of Scotland live are many yet they are all to be imputed to our own bad conduct and mismanagement of our Affairs 'T is true Trade being of late years vastly increased in Europe the poverty of any Nation is always imputed to their want of that advantage And tho our Soil be barren yet our Seas being the richest of any in the world it may be thought that the cause of all our Poverty has bin the neglect of Trade and chiefly of our own Fishing Nevertheless were I to assign the principal and original source of our Poverty I should place it in the letting of our Lands at so excessive a rate as makes the Tenant poorer even than his Servant whose Wages he cannot pay and involves in
willing to let them as they do in other Countries And tho the Masters may pretend that if they could find substantial Tenants they would let their Grounds as they do in other places and men of substance that if they could have Farms upon such conditions they would turn Tenants yet we see evident marks of the little probability there is that any such thing can be brought about without a general regulation For in the West and North Countries where they let Land in Few or Fee the Superiors are so hard that besides the yearly few-duty they make the Fewer pay at his first entrance the whole intrinsick value of the Land and the people tho substantial men are fools and slaves enough to make such Bargains And in the same Countries when they let a small parcel of Land to a Tradesman they let it not for what the Land is worth but what both the Land and his Trade is worth And indeed 't is next to an impossibility to alter a general bad custom in any Nation without a general regulation because of inveterate bad dispositions and discouragements with which the first beginnings of Reformations are always attended Besides alterations that are not countenanced by the publick Authority proceed slowly and if they chance to meet with any check men soon return to their former bad methods The condition then of this Nation chiefly by this abuse of racking the Lands is brought to such extremity as makes all the Commonalty miserable and the Landlords if possible the greater Slaves before they can get their Rents and reduce them into Mony And because this evil is arriv'd to a greater height with us than I believe was ever known in any other place and that as I have said we are in no disposition to practise the methods of most other Countries I think we ought to find out some new one which may surmount all difficulties since in things of this nature divers methods may be proposed very practicable and much better than any that hitherto have bin in use I know that if to a Law prohibiting all Interest for Mony another were joined that no man should possess more Land than so much as he should cultivate by Servants the whole Mony as well as People of this Nation would be presently employed either in cultivating Lands or in Trade and Manufactures That the Country would be quickly improved to the greatest height of which the soil is capable since it would be cultivated by all the rich men of the Nation and that there would still be vast stocks remaining to be employed in Trade and Manufactures But to oblige a man of a great Estate in Land to sell all except perhaps 200 pounds Sterling a year which he might cultivate by his Servants and to employ the whole Mony produced by the sale of the rest in a thing so uncertain as he would judg Trade to be and for which 't is like he might have no disposition or genius being a thing impracticable and also to employ the small stocks of Minors Widows and other Women unmarried in Trade or Husbandry a thing of too great hazard for them I would propose a method for our relief by joining to the Law prohibiting all Interest of Mony and to the other that no man should possess more Land than so much as he cultivates by his Servants a third Law obliging all men that possess Lands under the value of 200 pounds Sterling clear profits yearly to cultivate them by Servants and pay yearly the half of the clear profits to such Persons as cultivating Land worth 200 pounds Sterling a year or above shall buy such Rents of them at twenty years purchase The Project in its full extent may be comprehended in these following Articles All Interest of Mony to be forbidden No man to possess more Land than he cultivates by Servants Every man cultivating Land under the value of 200 pounds Sterling clear profits a year to pay yearly the half of the clear profits to some other man who shall buy that Rent at twenty years purchase and for his security shall be preferred to all other Creditors No man to buy or possess those Rents unless he cultivate Land to the value at least of 200 pounds Sterling clear profits yearly Minors Women unmarried and persons absent upon a publick account may buy or possess such Rents tho they cultivate no Lands By the first Article discharging all Interest of Mony most men who have small sums at Interest will be obliged to employ it in Trade or the improvement of Land By the second That no man is to possess more Land than so much as he cultivates by his Servants the whole Land of the Kingdom will come into the hands of the richest men at least there will be no Land cultivated by any man who is not the possessor of it And if he have a greater Estate than what he cultivates he may lay out Mony upon Improvements or if he have bought a small possession tho he may have no more Mony left he may by selling one half of the Rent procure a sum considerable enough both to stock and improve it So that in a few years the Country will be every where inclosed and improved to the greatest height the Plow being every where in the hand of the possessor Then Servants Day-labourers Tradesmen and all sorts of Merchants will be well paid and the whole Commons live plentifully because they will all be employed by men of substance The Ground by inclosure and other improvements will produce the double of what it now dos and the race of Horses and black Cattel will be much mended By the other Articles That no man cultivating Land under the value of 200 pounds Sterling clear profits yearly can purchase Rents upon Land from any other man but is obliged to pay yearly the half of the clear profits to such persons as shall buy them at twenty years purchase and that only those who cultivate Land worth at least 200 pounds Sterling a year can buy such Rents The men of great Land Estates having sold all their Lands except so much as may yield 200 pounds Sterling yearly or so much above that value as they shall think sit to cultivate may secure if they please the whole Mony they receive for their Lands upon those Rents which the lesser possessors are obliged to sell And so those who had formerly their Estates in Lands ill cultivated and corn-Corn-rents ill paid as well as the other three sorts of persons excepted from the general rule and mentioned in the last Article will have a clear rent in Mony coming in without trouble for paiment of which they are to be secured in the Lands of the said lesser possessors before all Creditors The reason of excepting the three sorts of persons before mentioned from the general rule is evident because as has bin said it were unreasonable to oblige Minors or women unmarried to venture their smal
stocks in Trade or Husbandry and much more that those who are absent upon a publick account should be obliged to have any stock imploy'd that way since they cannot inspect either The small possessors by this Project are not wrong'd in any thing for if they are obliged to pay a Rent to others they receive the value of it And this Rent will put them in mind not to live after the manner of men of great Estates but as Husbandmen which will be no way derogatory to their Quality however antient their Family may be The method to put this Project in execution is first to enact That Interest for Mony should fall next year from six per Cent. to five and so on falling every year one per Cent. till it cease And to make a Law that all those who at present possess Lands under the value of 200 pounds Sterling clear profits yearly should cultivate them by Servants and sell the half of the clear profits at twenty years purchase to the first Minor woman unmarried or person absent upon a publick account who should offer Mony for them and in default of such persons presenting themselves to buy they should be obliged to sell such Rents to any other persons qualified as above and likewise to make another Law that whoever possesses Lands at present to the value of 200 l. Sterling clear profits yearly or more should at least take so much of them as may amount to that value into their own hands This being done the yearly falling of the Interest of Mony would force some of those who might have Mony at Interest to take Land for it Others calling for their Mony would buy estates of the landed men who are to sell all except so much as they cultivate themselves and the prohibition of Interest producing many small possessors would afford abundance of Rents upon Land to be bought by rich men of which many might probably be paid out of those very Lands they themselves formerly possessed So that all sorts of men would in a little time fall into that easy method for their Affairs which is proposed by the Project What the half of the yearly clear profits of any small Possessors may be the usual valuation of Lands in order to publick Taxes which because of improvements must be frequently made will ascertain But it will be said that before any such thing can every where take place in this Nation all Teinds or Tithes and all sorts of Superiorities must be transacted for and sold that the Tenures of all Lands must be made allodial to the end that every man may be upon an equal foot with another that this Project in order to its execution dos suppose things which tho perhaps they would be great blessings to the Nation upon many accounts and in particular by taking away the Seeds of most Law-suits and the obstructions to all sorts of Improvements yet are in themselves as great and considerable as the Project it self Indeed I must acknowledg that any thing calculated for a good end is since we must express it so almost always clogged with things of the same nature For as all bad so all good things are chained together and do support one another But that there is any difficulty to a Legislative Power that is willing to do good of putting either this Project or the things last named in execution I believe no man can show Sure I am that it never was nor can be the interest of any Prince or Commonwealth that any subject should in any manner depend upon another subject And that it is the Interest of all good Governments at least to encourage a good sort of Husbandry I know these Proposals by some men who aim at nothing but private Interest will be looked upon as visionary it is enough for me that in themselves and with regard to the nature of the things they are practicable but if on account of the indisposition of such men to receive them they be thought impracticable it is not to be accounted strange since if that indisposition ought only to be considered every thing directed to a good end is such Many other Proposals might be made to the Parliament for the good of this Nation where every thing is so much amiss and the publick Good so little regarded Amongst other things to remove the present Seat of the Government might deserve their consideration For as the happy situation of London has bin the principal cause of the Glory and Riches of England so the bad situation of Edinburgh has bin one great occasion of the poverty and uncleanliness in which the greater part of the people of Scotland live A Proposal likewise for the better education of our Youth would be very necessary and I must confess I know no part of the world where education is upon any tolerable foot But perhaps I have presumed too much in offering my opinion upon such considerable matters as those which I have treated Since I finished the preceding Discourses I am informed that if the present Parliament will not comply with the design of continuing the Army they shall immediately be dissolved and a new one called At least those of the Presbyterian perswasion who expect no good from a new Parliament are to be frighted with the Dissolution of the present which has established their Church-government and by that means induced to use their utmost endeavours with the Members for keeping up the Army and promoting the designs of ill men But I hope no Presbyterian will ever be for evil things that good may come of them since thereby they may draw a curse upon themselves instead of a blessing They will certainly consider that the interest which they ought to embrace as well upon the account of prudence as of justice and duty is that of their Country and will not hearken to the insinuations of ill men who may abuse them and when they have obtained the continuation of the Army endeavour to perswade his Majesty and the Parliament to alter the present Government of the Church by telling them that Presbyterian Government is in its nature opposite to Monarchy that they maintain a rebellious principle of defensive Arms and that a Church Government more sutable and subservient to Monarchy ought to be established Now if at this time the Presbyterians be true to the Interest of their Country all those who love their Country tho they be not of that perswasion will stand by them in future Parliaments when they shall see that they oppose all things tending to Arbitrary Power But if they abandon and betray their Country they will fall unpitied They must not tell me that their Church can never fall since it is the true Church of God If it be the true Church of God it needs no crooked Arts to support it But I hope they will not deny that it may fall under persecution which they will deserve if they go along with the least ill thing to maintain it FINIS