THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF SCOTLAND.

WE wonder if the Domesday Book of Scotland is satis- factory to Lord Derby ? His object in moving for the remarkable record which has just been presented to Par- liament, and which will hereafter exercise no small influence upon politics, was to dissipate a popular delusion, viz., that the land of Great Britain belonged to very few persons, indeed, as it was imagined, to less than 30,000 individuals. He maintained that there was no authority for this belief, that there were probably half-a-million owners of the soil, and requested an inquiry so full as to include a nominal roll of every man or woman owning more than one acre, or holding land on a lease of not less than ninety-nine years. The Peers, who knew perfectly well that if the limit were fixed low enough, and the long leases of the cities included, the number of owners would seem large, consented, and the first Division of the New Domesday Book-that for Scotland -has now been presented to both Houses. It is an admirable return, a monument of patient research and indomitable in- quisitiveness, and requires but two improvements to be perfect. The first is a separation between leaseholders and freeholders, the absence of which greatly and, in our judgment, unfairly increases the apparent num- ber of the latter ; and the second is a note to remind the reader that the person mentioned has property in more than one county. Apart from this, the work has been most patiently done; but whether Lord Derby, who understands statistics, will approve the result, is a most doubtful question. Of course the Tory papers, reading the Abstract, and finding that the total number of owners is stated at 131,530, have raised their usual pan of exultation over "those prejudiced Liberals"; but unfortunately the statement is true only to the ear, being in the sense in which the inquiry was ordered ludicrously and flagrantly false. Nobody was inquiring about borough property, or about the owners of single cottages with less than an acre round them, and apart from these two classes, the whole of Scotland outside the cities is owned or leased by 17,151 persons, of whom a large section own less than 20 acres. This number includes all who own even one acre-many hundreds own but two-even by a lease which was originally given for 99 years, and shows that the average ownership of Scotland, which contains nineteen millions of acres, is a block of 1,100 acres,-.-a result of no use in itself, but indicating the presence of an unusual num- ber of enormous proprietors. This, accordingly, we find to be the case, there being no less than 106 who hold more than 20,000 acres of land, and among them 52 who hold more than 50,000 acres. We give a list of these men, drawn up as accurately as we can manage, the only doubtful case in our own mind being the Duke of Roxburghe, who must have a fourth estate some where which we have failed to find, and the list shows past all doubt or question that 106 persons hold within a fraction half the whole extent of Scotland. From the method of calculation we have adopted, two or three men may have more than we have said-for example, Balfour of Whittinghame, whom it is necessary to hunt through an actuary-but no one can hold less. Moreover, we have sternly omitted every man just under the 20,000 acres, the single exception being Lord Lothian, who must have some outlying bit sufficient to make up his frac- tional difference. One man alone in his own right and his wife's holds more than a fifteenth of the entire area of the kingdom, and 21 men own nearly a third, a proportion pro- bably exceeding anything known in Western Europe. There are vast estates in South Italy, no doubt, and in Austria and in Spain ; but except in the instance of grandees of the latter country, they are held by families, and not by individuals. We have abstained rigidly from adding anything to the avowed ownership of the individual, except, in one or two cases, his predecessor's " Trusts," which, on expiry, rejoin the main property-and this is the result :- Acres.

Sir J. Gladstone H. G.111. Stewart Mackenzie of Coul Cluny Macpherson J. Fowler Earl of Abingor Duncan Davidson E. J. S. Blair SirW. Gordon Cumming Sir R. Anstruther Mrs. Cathcart Lady Menzies Sir A. D. Stewart R. S. Menzies Sir R. Menzies Stuart of Lochcarron Duncan Darroch Sir S. M. Lockhart Earl of Hopetoun D. R. Williamson Sir T. Colebrook° Busta Estate • Dowager Lady Ashburi.„.,..„ ton '18,800

Sir G. Dunbar 27000

Colonel D. Macpherson 26,804 Mackenzie of Kintail 25,500

C. H. D. Moray 25,000 Sir R. M. Shaw-Stowart 25,000.

Bruce of Symbister 25,000 Lady Nicolson 25,000.

Grant of Rothiemurchus 24,500 J. H. Macdonald 24,000 Earl of Lauderdale 24,000 Major Cameron 24,000 H. A. Johnstone 24,000 Mrs. Mary Robertson 24,000 R. A. Oswald 24,004 Earl of Eglinton 23,000 Sir J. Fergusson 22,600 Earl of Southesk 2 J. C. J. Brodie ..... .22:00 D. Carnegie 22,,00 Mr. D. Ogilvy 22,000 Earl of Rosebery 24000 Macpherson of Glen - •

truim L.; . 21,000 Marquis of Tweedds,le Q,NO

Sir H. H. Campbell 20,000 Mr. W. Grant !'20,0510 Mr. A. Fraser 20,000 Colonel Farquharson:- 20,000- W. Macdonald - 20,000 Marquis of Lothian 20,000 E. C. Sutherland Walker 20,000

Total A350,884 The popular idea that the Duke of Stither1and-6*fis an entire county is not true, as Sir C. W. Rois has 55-,000-abiet, aid Sir James Matheson'.= ownti a petty = Morsel!' of = 18;600 acres in Sutherlandshire, and,_-0-ordon Macleod has 11,000, and E. C. Sutherlan&Walkeir 20,000', and there are nineteen other freeholders 'of 'thoie'than 100 abrei ; bit the Thike does own with his -Wife, the 'Connteis of1Cioniartiewheie, by the way; they1inè nit''''Pailintly -an icre-"-more than the entire fiuffii&Pb'Fafilje"'Coti Y"iiirEngland Leiceptt "Yorkelfife Duke of Sutherland 1,176,343

Duchess of Sutherland 149,879 Sir J. Matheson 406.070)

Mr. A. Matheson 220,4333-

Earl of Breadalbane 437,696 Duke of Buccleugh 432,183 Earl of Seafield 306,000 Mr. Evan Baillio 300,000 Earl of Stair 270,000 Duke of Richmond 255,000 Duke of Athol° 194,000 Duke of Hamilton 183,000 Duke of Argyll 175,000 Sir K. Mackenzie of Gairloch 164,680 Macleod of Macleod 141,700 Earl of Dalhousie 136,000 Lord Macdonald 130,000 The Mackintosh 124,000 Earl of Fife 113,000 Sir C. W. Ross 110,400 Cameron of Lochiel 109,500 Duke of Portland 106.000 Sir G. M. Grant 103,000 Mr. E. Ellice 99,500 The Chisholm 94,500 Marquis of Bute 93,000 Sir J. O. Orde 81,000 Balfour ofWhittinghamo 81,000 Marquis of Huntly 80,000 Mr. J. Malcolm 80,000 Baroness Willoughby d'Eresby 76,800 Marquis of A:ilsa 76,000 Grant of Glenmorriston 74,600 Meyrick Bankes 70,000 Duke of Montrose 68,000 C. Morrison 67,000 M'ir J. Colqnhoun 67,000 Earl of Airlie 65,000 Mr. J. J. H. Johnstone 64,000 Mackenzie of Dundonell 64,000 Earl of Aberdeen 63,500 Lord Middleton 63,000 Countess of Home 62,000 Earl of Moray 61,700 Duke of Roxburgh° 60,000 Earl of Dunmore 60,000 Sir J. Ramsden 60,000 Mr. J. Baird 60,000 E. H. Scott (Harris) 59,700 Sir C. W. A. Ross 55,000 Sir J. Riddell 54,500 Earl of Wemyss 52,000 J. G. M. Heddle 50,400 Earl of Cawdor 46,000

Acres. 45,000 45,000 43,000 42,000 39,500 39,500 38,000 37,000 36,400 36,000 36,000 35,000 33,0011. 33,000 32,704 32,400.. 32,000+ 31,500. 30,000 29,500- 29,000 29,000.

and Lincolnahire. It is a popular delusion to suppose also that the Duke of Argyll owns Argyllshire, his share being less than a tenth ; but he and the other Campbell, the Earl of Bteadalbane, own 340,000 acres of it between them, stretching from the Western Isles to the Eastern frontier of the county, where Lord Breadalbane's Perthshire property carries on the story to the head of Loch Tay. We have taken no account of families, and have no room for petty lairds with only 10,000 or 15,000 acres ; but no one can read the Scotch "Domes- day Book," with its columns of properties held by Campbells, Kerrs, Scotts, Stewarts, Macleods, Ramsays, and so on, with- out perceiving how ownership has been developed. The Chiefs' right to a part of the produce of the soil has gradually hardened into ownership ; and where they have split their estates, necessarily vast, for they were the estates of tribes, it has been usually among their own families. The men not heads of clans who have bought great estates are few, though three of them, Sir James Matheson, the China merchant, of whose birth we know nothing, but who was once a penniless clerk in Calcutta ; Mr. Evan Baillie, and Lord Portland, who in Scotland is a new man, stand in the very front rank of great proprietors.

It will, of course, be observed that the amount of revenue obtained from these estates is not now commensurate with their a Teage, the Duke of Sutherland's, for instance, being valued at only a shilling an acre, while there are small estates valued at two pounds ; but that is the very evil of which we complain, as the result of these huge aggregations of the surface of the kingdom. They keep down cultivation, improvement, and above all, building. The Duke of Sutherland, for example, is said to be a good landlord, and is certainly an active one, but can anyone believe that he can or does manage his gloomy deserts as a hundred proprietors would with 11,000 acres a piece, and the whip of necessity behind them to make them inventive, to compel them to grant "feus," to seek for minerals, to invite colonists, to apply that patient, minute care to arbori- culture out of which some great proprietors have obtained so much ? There are hillsides in Perthshire where a shilling an • acre has become ten shillings merely by oak planting,---not for timber, a slow and wearying process, but for bark. What can work for ten hours a day bring to a Duke with sufficient English revenues, or why should he bore himself to reclaim a moor Sutherlandshire is bad enough, and its rent-roll but a poor one ; but plant it down in Switzerland as a Canton, and a community of freeholders would very soon make it a comfortable, or at least an endurable, residence for a hundred thousand people. Does anybody honestly think that the vast property of the two Campbells, stretching almost from sea to sea across the very waist of Scotland, would not, if held by a hundred men, instead of two, become twice as populous as it is now, and four times as wealthy and productive ? The land, no doubt, is poor, but it is of the kind for which capital, patience, and incessant labour could and would do miracles, for which its present owners feel no need, and which they would make no especial exertion to secure. They will say, or rather their agents for them will say, that such effort would be useless ; but let them help as legislators to enfranchise the land till they are owners in fee-simple, and then offer to all comers feu - tenures, 'tenures in perpetuity, and see the prices they will from

e very first obtain. We do not want to deprive them an inch of their lands, rather, by abolishing the power ;0D:settlement and entail, we would increase indefinitely their ietory rights ; but we want to see other rights allowed to

w up under them, paying them neither by votes, nor service, ,norliespact, but by increased cash rentals. Old Coke, of Norfolk, in alifetipa. e would double the rental of Taymouth Castle, triple population of that glorious property, and increase its actual 4-p ce 'indefinitely, losing nothing the while, except a quasi- ( .t ep,41 paver, which he ought not to have. The Duke of knows well the evil that in India is produced by the (b/bdetce ofothe sense of property, yet from Iona to the German 1M thatlense is almost as absent asin Bombay. You cannot $anadrOiiql unless the system has very recently altered, you Parma obtain a farm with absolute security of tenure. These '-labittAaineks. Will one day tempt confiscation, as the estates f,r4,4e. ;Pato:cow, clid,firr, New., York State ; but it is not cconasnat4e4,;-, but, in ;chengen of tenure, in the aboli- ct, lof the „Riyrer of, eviction, incept for non-payment ,ofoaf trent/ Nviap,c1,_ like the tithe,1„t4at improvement is aultinAattely, to; ; found., , ,,Tb,e. Duke qf ; Sutherland does Xtiett,c, ,it i. sa, cParticalaX1Y j40 sees his way

,t4karofiti.4,jrhich he, 4uita rglt,,pro&t being the oewe rf4„flucese in agriciiitiaraLinapipvement ; but no ATtow,vion441„bAer ,tbia,fr.nenclii.r44,4„utherlendehire 4eede for

its improvement, and there are worse cases than Sutherland- shire. There are tracts of immense extent where the landlosHr could no more do what is needed to be done than he could pay the National Debt, and is merely in the capitalist's way.. What would not Arran become in the hands of Thomas Brassey ? A million might be spent in Skye, and spent to pay, for Skye ought to be the Oberland of Scotland ; but who is to spend it with the present tenure ? And. now, as we write, we read in the Echo that Skye, which once sent so extra- ordinary a proportion of its men to the Army, is to be left almost without population, the people at last having resolved that they will depart to lands where they are sure of meat, instead of an almost perennial deficiency of oatmeal. If the Domesday Book of Scotland proves anything, it proves that the first necessity of the country is either the disappearance of pro- prietors able to endure a rental of a shilling an acre, or a radical change in the habitual sub-tenure of the soil ; and that, we take it, is so far precisely what Lord Derby did not intend to prove.