10
proved districts, the cost of making the lease, which, I may observe, is, from the nature of the Scotch title and the statutable leasing powers, much less than with us, could never prevent, and as a matter of fact never does prevent a capitalist farmer from having the security of a lease or of an agreement for a lease. But when we come to the small crofters, paying £1, £2, and £3 annual rent, then the cost of a lease comes to be a serious item. A cost of £2 will often amount to more than a whole year's rent. It becomes important to see, then, in what this cost consists, and whether it admits of removal.
The cost of a lease consists of two parts, the stamp and the legal expenses. The lowest stamp, until 1850, was £1 on the lease and £1 on the counterpart. Now the scale of duties on leases is fixed, by the 13th and 14th Vic., c. 97, at £1 for leases where the rent does not exceed £200, and at a graduated scale for leases at a lower rent, giving 6d. as the lowest duty for leases where the rent is under £5. What a grave censure on our system of taxation it is, to find a public officer, engaged in distributing large grants for the relief of distress, reporting that the want of leases was the main cause of that distress; and to find a proprietor enabled with truth to allege, that the stamp on the lease was one of the causes that prevented their being granted!
The second part of the cost of crofter leases also admits of a very effectual remedy. The real expense of preparing a lease is the necessity of inserting in it a number of covenants and conditions; and although the common forms or printed forms are used, still the trouble of copying them or filling them, and of comparing them to guard against mistakes, is very considerable. A plan for obviating this difficulty has been suggested by Mr. Robert Longfield, in his recent very able Report[1] to the Social Inquiry Society of Ireland; and his plan is as applicable to crofter leases in Scotland as to leases of small holdings in Ireland. “I would,” he says, “recommend that the common clauses inserted in every lease, covenant to pay rent, clause of distress and re-entry, to keep and deliver up in repair, should be legal obligations flowing from the mere contract of tenancy, and not from express stipulation; and thus the following form:—
| A B agrees to let, and C D to take the lands of Blackacre for the term of forty years, from the 1st of May, 1851, at the rent of £100 per annum, payable half-yearly, on the 1st of November and 1st of May. | ||
| (Witness,) | I A, | A B, |
| O P, | C D, | |
would comprehend and import all that is now contained in the ordinary printed leases.”—p. 20.
