o much attention has of late been given to
their complaints. Their poverty and hardships have long been known in
England. The reports made by the Emigration Commissioners in 1841 and by
Sir John McNeil a few years later contain accounts of miserably small
and unproductive holdings, of wretched hovels for dwellings, of lack of
enterprise and interest in making improvements, of curtailment of
pasture, of high rents and insecurity of tenure, very similar to those
found on the pages of the report of the late Royal Commission. While in
this interval the condition of the crofters has but slightly, if at all,
improved, there has been a very considerable improvement in the
condition of the middle and lower classes of the people in other parts
of Scotland and in England. The masses of the people have better houses,
better food and clothing, while with the development of the school
system and the newspaper press general intelligence has greatly
increased. The accounts of the poverty and wretchedness of the crofters
now reach the public much more quickly and make a much deeper impression
on all classes than they did forty years ago. While these small farmers
are not numerous,--there are probably not more than four thousand
families in need of relief,--many of their kinsmen elsewhere have
acquired wealth and influence and have been able to plead their cause
with good effect. In this country "The Scottish Land League" has issued
in "The Cry of the Crofter" an eloquent plea for help to carry on the
agitation to a successful issue.

Another reason for the increased attention that has lately been given to
these claims is found in the rapidly-growing tendency to concede to the
landlord fewer and fewer and to the tenant more and more rights in the
land. The recent extension of the suffrage, giving votes to nearly two
millions of agricultural and other laborers, leads politicians to go as
far as possible in favoring new legislation in the interest of tenants
and laborers. The crofters' case has therefore come to be of special
interest as a part of the general land question which has of late
received so much attention from the English press and Parliament, and
which is pretty certain to be prominent for several years to come.

Those who are familiar only with the relations existing between landlord
and tenant in this country are naturally surprised to find the crofter
demanding that his landlord shall (1) give him the use of more land,
(2