Scots, or L.66. 13s. 4d. Sterling, per annum, while its present rental may be estimated at L.10,000, i.e. the rental is to the tithe as one hundred and fifty to one. In Essex the rental is to the payable tithe as four and a half to one, and in some parts of England still less *.

SECTION V.-POOR-RATES, AND OTHER PAROCHIAL

TAXES.

THERE are no poor-rates, in the English sense of the expression, established in Scotland. A parochial assessment may be enforced in case of necessity; and one half of the sum deemed requisite for the maintenance of the poor, must be defrayed by the land-owners or heritors of the parish, and the other half by the rest of the householders. The minister and kirk-session can prosecute the heritors and other parishioners for their shares of this provision for the poor. It is defrayed in proportion to the valued rent of each individual's property. This regulation was passed into a law in 1740, and has been frequently acted upon. The fund so rais

ed

Government has very humanely taken the case of the poorer clergy into consideration lately; and it is intended that no stipend in Scotland shall be under L,150 Sterling.

ed is distributed among the poor by the minister, elders, and kirk-session. In the Hebrides, such assessments have not yet taken place; and the poor are supported by voluntary donations, by alms granted to them as they beg through the country, by collections made for their behoof on Sundays and sacramental days in the churches, by mort-cloth or pall dues, by marriage-licence dues, (which by the way ought to be abolished,) by fines levied from delinquents in the church courts, &c. and by allowances from some proprietors and their relatives who attend to the claims of reason and humanity. It rarely happens, indeed, that the poor suffer severely. The people are very charitable; and although most of the great landed proprietors, and many of the smaller are non-resident, yet they themselves or their ladies allow some stated provision annually for the maintenance of their poor. Beggary is reckoned disgraceful; and accordingly the number of beggars is small in comparison to what it is in other parts of our empire. There are not above 1300 individuals in all the isles who take alms or accept of aid from their parishes; and these do not at an average receive above ten shillings each per annum. The small sum of six hundred and fifty pounds annually as poor-rates, from a population of nearly one hundred thousand souls, is perhaps unexampled in any Christian country in modern times.

It frequently happens, however, that resident families are heavily burdened with the supply of clothes and medicines for the poor of their parish, while that duty is entirely overlooked and neglected by those proprietors who are non-resident. We could name many charitable and amiable families, and especially females, who

lay

lay out considerable sums annually in this way; but, as ostentation has not been their motive, and as their permission to be publicly known as examples to others has not been obtained or asked, we leave them to the applauding voice of their vicinity, and to the dignified consciousness of virtue. It were to be wished, that, in a region where medicines and surgical and medical aid are peculiarly expensive, some general assessment would be adopted for the relief of the poor, and that means could be fallen upon of putting the truly charitable upon a par, in respect of expence towards the poor, with the negligent, the avaricious, and the unmerciful.

In one island and parish, the noble proprietor has this season granted the multures and rents of all the mills, amounting to a sum of near three hundred pounds, to the poor. In some adjoining islands, nothing of the kind took place; and accordingly the most dismal scenes ensued, in consequence of the great scarcity of provisions which has prevailed.

The parochial taxes which are paid in the Hebrides, besides minister's stipends, are cess, road-money, roguemoney, and schoolmaster's salary. Of all these the farmers ought to be relieved by the proprietors of the ground, who might charge them as part of the gross rent paid for their lands, and thus save their tenants a vast deal of perplexity and litigation.

It is very strange that men so acute and humane as the Hebridians, have not as yet formed any associations or clubs, by subscribing to which for some years a very small sum, they might secure themselves from beggary in sickness and in old age. The sum of sixpence aweek for twenty years, would entitle subscribers to an

annuity

annuity of seven or eight pounds per annum in advanced years; an advantage enjoyed by the members of similar societies in other parts of our empire, and surely worthy of attention in a country, of which the natives are peculiarly exposed to accidents, both on account of their remote situation and of their perilous employ

ments.

SECTION VI.-LEASES.

THE general currency or duration of leases, on the few well managed estates, is nineteen or twenty-one years; and those on the second-rate estates rarely exceed seven or nine. The stipulations are equally differ

ent.

Sometimes they are oppressive and impracticable, and consequently not only pernicious, but ridiculous and illusory; as, for instance, where the tenants are bound upon oath to apply a specified proportion of the sea-weeds to manuring their lands, and the rest to the making of kelp; a promise sinful to exact, because it cannot be fulfilled, seeing no man can exactly measure or weigh the produce of sea-weed growing on his shores. Sometimes the stipulations are grossly injudicious and silly, and indeed they are dictated by good sense, or an acquaintance with the country, only on ten or twelve estates. On many isles no leases are given to the small

tenants,

tenants; and these people accordingly, as might be expected, are miserable slaves.

In one of those i lands, a poor tenant expressed himself in strong terms against the landlord of the estate, and especially his advisers, and concluded his bitter invective with these words: "The commandments of "our GREAT MASTER are only ten in number, and a "reward is offered if we keep them; but those of our "insular tyrant here, who is himself well-meaning and

easy, are forty-seven (the clauses in his common agree"ments) many of which are inconsistent with each "other, and impossible to be observed; and all the re❝ward we can expect, is to live slaves, and to die beg"gars."

In the Hebrides, as in other districts, we meet with anomalies and singularities in point of situation, which proprietors must particularly keep in view when letting their lands. The most striking of these are the following:

Such estates as have large quantities of sand banks near their shores, as, for instance, the Long Island, Coll, Tyree, and part of Islay, do not admit of march dykes, or of any regular enclosures in their sandy districts. An attempt to build any such fences might prove highly dangerous, by loosening the sand, or creating new openings for sand-drift and devastation. To stipulate for dykes in such situations, is therefore, though very common, the excess of folly and of igno

rancé.

Estates, of which the principal product is kelp, cannot easily carry on any thing like regular agriculture, or effect essential improvements in their stocks of hor