corn lands? and what ought to be
most encouraged in this country? Whether great or small farms are most
advantageous to the country? What are the most proper measures for a
gentleman to promote industry on his own estate? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of gentlemen of estate being farmers?
What is the best and most proper duration of leases of land in
Scotland? What prestations beside the proper tack-duty tenants ought
to be obliged to pay with respect to carriages and other services,
planting and preserving trees, maintaining enclosures and houses,
working freestone, limestone, coal, or minerals, making enclosures,
straightening marches, carrying off superfluous water to other
grounds, and forming drains? and what restrictions they should be put
under with respect to cottars, live stock on the farm, winter herding,
ploughing the ground, selling manure, straw, hay, or corn, thirlage to
mills, smiths or tradesmen employed on business extrinsic to the farm,
subsetting land, granting assignations of leases, and removals at the
expiration of leases? What proportion of the produce of lands should
be paid as rent to the master? In what circumstances the rents of
lands should be paid in money? in what in kind? and in what time they
should be paid? Whether corn should be sold by measure or by weight?
What is the best method of getting public highways made and repaired,
whether by a turnpike law, as in many places in Great Britain, by
county or parish work, by a tax, or by what other method? What is the
best and most equal way of hiring and contracting servants? and what
is the most proper method to abolish the practice of giving of
vails?"[85] The society had what may be termed a special agricultural
branch, to which I shall presently refer, and which met once a month
and discussed chiefly questions of husbandry and land management; and
the above list of subjects looks, from its almost exclusively agrarian
character, as if it had been rather the business of this branch of the
society merely than of the society as a whole. Still the same causes
that made rural economy predominate in the monthly work of the branch
would give it a large place in the weekly discussions of the parent
association. The members were largely connected with the landed
interest, and agricultural improvement was then on the order of the
day.

In this society accordingly, which Smith attended very frequently,
though he does not appear to have sp