THE CROFTER.
pro THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—In his speech at Bedford Mr. Lloyd George apparently desires the young men of Scotland, instead of emigrating, to become a "sturdy race of crofters." If this is the case, he surely is the most callous or the most ignorant of men. To live on the brink of starvation, working from daylight to dark, in an effort to wring out an existence from between the rocks on a Scottish mountain side—is this the life to which Mr. Lloyd George would condemn a young man, while across the water lie the boundless plains of the West, with their rich, stoneless loam P Who that has ever been in Scotland in November of a wet year can forget the pathetic sight of some crofter's patch of oats, from which his bread has to come, still standing out, the pitiful little stooks discoloured and water- logged with the never-ending rain ? In the long pauses incidental to stalking, the other day on the West Coast, I talked with the old stalker, a patriarch full of years and ripe wisdom, about the lives of the crofters in the days when he was young. To eke out their existence in the summer they used to walk across the Highlands, help in the harvest on the East Coast, and then walk back. To anyone who knows the country a walk from Kyle of Lochalsh to Forfarshire will appear no light undertaking. Let Mr. Lloyd George, instead of motoring from one luxurious and expensive hotel to
another on the Continent, try the life of a crofter for a year or two that he so confidently recommends ; at the end of that time he will have learnt some invaluable lessons.—I am,
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