Series 4 > Papers on Sutherland Estate Management 1802-1816 > Volume 9

i8i 1-1816
295
in every way. I however did not succeed. The year before last,
things looked less well and I was applied to by Young to send a
Manager from England. I engaged one and he twice gave him the
Slip, at last he was obliged to ask for the assistance of Lord Staffords
coal bailiff here and upon his report the present bailiff1 was sent
down. At first he would make a Gentleman of him and spoiled him,
and last year he quarrelled with him and would have dismissed
him but I absolutely made a point to keep him. The information
upon which he was proceeding, he obtained from his own men a
very wrong thing to do. By a little manoeuver he got me to see
those men after I had positively refused. I ascertained from them that
he was in every respect a faithful and diligent servant. However this
state of things enabled me again to represent that this concern never
would pay directly but only indirectly in a thousand ways which I
need not state to you. I was for husbanding the Coal, the extent of
which cannot be great, in order that it might continue to be the
groundwork of a vast industry arising in that Country. After much
difficulty I shewed Young and got him to acknowledge that he
never could make a direct profit of it, but yet his great object is
to drive a little trade. This is the sort of thing in which he was brought
up and which he likes, and in following which I think he has
committed the great mistake in his management of the Sutherland
Estate. A property of a great English Nobleman must be managed
on the same principles of a little kingdom and not like the affairs of
a little Merchant. The future and lasting interest and honor of the
family as well as their immediate income must be kept in view,
while a merchant thinks only of his daily profit and his own im¬
mediate life interest. In no affairs is this principle so much to be
kept in view as Lord Staffords. The nature, the extent and the
remoteness of the Sutherland Estate, the sort of improvement it
requires, the extent and nature of his English property giving him
the greatest free income of any Nobleman, this income not descend¬
ing with the Sutherland Estate, all render the adoption of the prin¬
ciple of management and improvement, so well explained by you
in your letter and hinted at here peculiarly necessary. The great
sinews of improvement should be Lord Staffords Object, the minor
features can be filled up by Lord Gower and his tenants. If the
1 John Jermyn (for whose ultimate dismissal see above, i, p. Ixxiii).