SCOTCH AGRICULTURE: SCOTCH PAUPERISM. GREAT and comparatively successful efforts have
been made by the agriculturists of Scotland to overcome the backwardness of the soil and climate. They are justly proud of their victory over nature, but this pride is apt to render them too dogmatical. Having con- quered difficulties by their anxious care and economy, they would press the same pinching policy upon all men however favourably circumstanced. Andrew Fairservice, who became a good gardener by being bred in the parish of Dreepdaily, where they raise nettles under bell-glasses for winter-kail, and Richie Moniplies, with his ever-ready redundance of good advice, are the true types of the modern Scotch agriculturist : it is " workee, workee," no doubt ; but it is " preachee, preachee," too, with a vengeance. There is something imposing about all bold layers-down of the law, that makes men defer to them even when bored and provoked by their dogmatism. And this deference increases in proportion to the ignorance of the hearer. The English manufacturers of the Anti- Corn-law League have been amazingly edified by the Triptolemus Yellowlees of Scotland ; and have exhorted their clod-compelling countrymen, in season and out of season, to go and learn their trade in the North.
Mr. PUSEY appears to have taken this advice, and set off to Scot- land in search of agricultural knowledge, as PLATO repaired to Egypt in search of wisdom. Mr. PUSEY'S disappointment may easily be imagined : it has been vehemently expressed by him in newspaper articles, in a review, and lastly in a pamphlet. He found that the lecturing agriculturists of Scotland were no excep- tion to the rule that prophets have little honour in their own land. Ile found farmers with average intelligence, much like those he had left in Berkshire. He found a country which, though it can be made to yield good crops, cannot display the exuberant lux- uriance of vegetation that characterizes the Southern parts of the island. He found a population who, though no longer Glenbur- nyish, are certainly less exactly tidy than their Southern fellow- subjects. What with disappointment, and what with the repul- siveness of a certain hardness in the scenery and manners of the people, Mr. PUSEY was the reverse of gratified with his visit : he has unconsciously grown testy, and he undervalues Scotland and Scotch agriculture nearly as much as Anti-Corn-law orators have exagge- rated their merits.
Mr. PUSEY has, however, detected one real weak point in the social institutions of Scotland—their Poor-law ; and this will pro- bably be more resented than his less grounded strictures. Con- scious merit can bear with equanimity undeserved and even rudely- urged blame ; but conscious demerit winces when pointed at. The Scotchmen of Dr. Jonissoe's time were most galled by his remarks about Scotland's want of trees. With Scotch nationality, they vowed that there were plenty of trees in Scotland ; but, with Scotch prudence, they at the same time set sedulously to work to plant. It is to be hoped that Mr. PUSEY'S remarks on the want of a fitting provision for the poor in Scotland may have the same effect. Scotch- men may be allowed to protest that their present method of deal- ing with the poor has been dictated by absolute wisdom, provided they at the same time exert themselves to get it mended.
The truth is, that the total change which fifty or a hundred years have brought about in the social relations of Scotland has rendered its makeshift substitute for a poor-law inefficient. When there were no manufactures in Scotland—when the relations of laird, tenant, and cottar, were such as men yet alive and scarce past the noon of life remember them in the wilder pastoral districts— every parish was left safely enough to make its own poor-law. The country was too bare to make begging a very tempting profession. The beggars were mostly of home-manufacture, and their numbers not such as to create alarm. The well-known mendicant trudged his narrow round with the regularity of a mill-horse : his wallets were replenished with meal at the farm-house and with beef-bones at the ball, and an occasional penny here and there supplied him with snuff and whisky. The anomalous class which gives most trouble to legislators against pauperism—the people who are not exactly beggars, and yet not able to maintain themselves—bad always some one to whom they could look for assistance. It has been remarked that there never was a Scotchman, however poor or low his origin, who could not contrive to make out a relationship to some respect-
able family. The poor of Scotland were mainly provided for by private charity : extraordinary emergencies were met by the scanty collections in the church, parsimoniously doled out by the Kirk- Session, or an occasional assessment by the Heritors.
This state of affairs belongs to the past. It looks well in a poem or a novel ; and, very likely, was as endurable a condition as it is given to mortals to enjoy, though not so perfect as the laudator temporis acti would have us think. But it no longer exists. Ma- nufactures and agricultural improvements have broken up the old relations of society, and created new. "A stranger sits in Charlie's chair "; and less elevated seats too are everywhere occupied by new men. Scotland is no longer a country of cousins from first to three-hundredth inclusive. The wealthier and poorer classes have moved to a greater distance from each other; their boundaries are more sharply defined—they no longer pass insensibly into each other. The feudal tie is broken : the employer pays his operative while be works, and then has done with him. In the highly-culti- vated districts, at least—in the Lothians, for example—the agri- cultural is on the same footing in this respect as the manufacturing labourer : the " farmer" has been transformed into " a capitalist who invests his capital in the manufacture of corn." Paupers have multiplied in number, and are less looked after—except by the police.
The Kirk-Session system of providing for the poor is inapplicable in the large manufacturing towns of Scotland. Dr. CHALMERS has demonstrated this. Not, indeed, by his writings—for in the last number of the North British Review he argues as sturdily against the poor-laws as ever ; but by his experiments. Some five-and- twenty years ago, Dr. CHALMERS got leave to try the work- ing of the "parochial system" of providing for the poor in Glasgow. His eloquence—offspring of his earnest sincerity— gathered round him a band of zealous and indefatigable proselytes; and for a short time the system flourished in his own parish. But he was removed from the cure of a parish in Glasgow to fill a Uni- versity chair in St. Andrew's; and it was soon discovered that Dr. CHALMERS'S system could only be worked by Dr. CHALMERS him- self. Ill-natured people did hint that he accepted the chair to es- cape the mortification of seeing the system fail even in his own hands. This we do not believe—it is irreconcilable with the sim- plicity and truthfulness of the Doctor's character ; nor is any such uncharitable imputation requisite—that is not a practically useful system which can only be successfully worked by a man of rare talent and enthusiasm.
In the improved agricultural districts, the Kirk-Session system has of late years been found quite as inadequate as in crowded cities. A new poor-law—not the poor-law of Somerset House, but one adapted to the peculiarities of Scotch society—one for which an efficient agency already exists—is wanted. When all Scotland, except a few unrecognized Episcopalians, was of one Church, the Kirk-Session was an efficient agency ; but it has ceased to be so since the Secession and Relief Churches raised their heads, and Episco- pacy became young and strong again. Dr. CHALMERS—always fated, it would seem, to deal the unkindest blows to his own brain- child—has been mainly instrumental in adding a new Church to those already existing, to render the Sessions of the established Kirk more inadequate to the distribution of the national charity—the management of the national poor-fund. There is something con- genial to the idea of a church in its undertaking the task of dis- pensing charity ; and this is still strongly felt in Scotland : but men must bend to circumstances. The agency of the New Scotch Poor- law must be secular.
Previous page
