Chiefs of Grant > Correspondence

C. 1764.] JAMES GRANT, YOUNGER OF GRANT. 439
therefore, placing great confidence in your fidelity and attachment to our family, I desire
you '11 give me all the information you can.
You'll therefore, as soon as possible, make out and send me a clear and distinct
abstract of the rental, by which you collect, distinguished into different columns, such as, the
name of the tenant, and his farm or possession, his meal and money-rent, customs, and
services, and the time of the expiration of his tack. Let the improvers or new tenants be
set down as they pay immediately; and let me know if there are many pieces of new
ground that might be lett out to tenants in that way. You are to acquaint the tenants
that I am extremel}' desirous they should all begin to improve, at least, some parts of then-
grounds with lime, which, by the confirm'd and repeted experience of all the Highlands of
Scotland who have used it, is found to be the best of all manures ; and when farmers in
some countries pay from two to three shillings for the common measured boll or four firlots
of lime, carried perhaps fifteen or twenty miles, what a shame it is that the tenants in
Urquhart, who have lime-stone at their doors, should scarcely have once tried it.
I know that all country people whose minds are not enlarged by a proper education,
are great enemies to all innovations, which they think will ruin them. This, I am well
assured, was the case with regard to kail or cabbages, which was introduced into the High-
lands not above 100 years ago. "When the heretors, who had seen the advantages of kail in
England and Holland, proposed to their tenants to plant them in their yards, they first
resisted, and when the heretors planted them, they pull'd 'em out by the roots, till the
heretors at last compell'd 'em by fines in their Baron Courts to allow them to grow, and
now they could not live without them.
You are to acquaint them that it is likeways my inclination that all my tenants in
Urquhart should go on in cultivating the sowing of lint, spinning linnen yarn, and making
linnen, which have been so happily begun amongst them of late. Of which manufacture the
great advantages will be but too visible this bad year in the counties of Perth, Banff, and
Aberdeen, where many tenants who have bad crops of grain, will by such manufacture be
enabled to pay all their rents. Show them that in all rich countries, particularly in
England and Flanders, good farming and manufactures have been carried on hand in
hand.
You are to acquaint the tenants that whoever refuses, or shews a backwardness in him-
self, or seems to discourage others in making or using lime, or in sowing lintseed, shall be
objects of my displeasure, and that I will remember them, if they ask any favours of me, or
if ever I live to renew their tacks ; and of such persons you are to keep a list.
Let me know what progress liming has made in your collection, and what methods you
would propose to make it universal ; for I am determin'd to introduce it in every part of
my estate, both highland and lowland.
Let me know how far the lands in your collection are in general distant from Keith,