"I pass from the handloom weavers to the farmers and landlords of Cumberland. I know none of the cases to which the honourable member alluded of my own knowledge; but he adverted to a farm which has been recently relet in Cumberland at a considerable diminution of rent. The noble marquis has spoken of his labourers. Perhaps I may here be permitted to say a few words of mine. I have already stated to you the infinite obligations I am placed under by the conduct of my tenantry, but I stand here this moment without an acre of land unlet which I wish to let. I have not for the last five years changed two tenants who pay me above £100 a-year, and I have not an arrear of £300 on my whole rental. That is the state of my county, so far as I am concerned. But I look to the estate of my neighbour, of my colleague, and of my friend, as I am proud to call him, the Duke of Buccleuch, one of the greatest proprietors in the south of Scotland, and one who differed from me as to the policy of Free Trade. He has not, in Roxburghshire and Dumfries, let land falling out of lease--and those leases are usually for nineteen years--at any diminution of rent. A case has been mentioned, again, of a farm in East Lothian; and I dare say some hon. member more conversant with the details of that property than I am will speak upon that point; but, as I am informed, the farm in question had been previously in the hands of the owner, and had never been let before the last letting--that it was never calculated to be worth more than £1800 a-year--that some speculative farmer took it at £2200--that he made an imprudent and improvident bargain--and that a remission, therefore, has taken place, reducing the rent below £1800 a-year, but not much. I have friends in East Lothian, and I have made it my business to inquire into these matters, and I am told farms let freely as they fall out of lease, without any diminution of rent whatever; and also I am informed that the value of the fee-simple, which is the real test among the shrewd and sagacious people of Scotland, has increased since the repeal of the Corn Laws. I have said I have no farms to let; but I have perceived that, since the repeal of the Corn Laws, there has been a competition for land, arising among a class of persons with whom there was formerly no desire to occupy land, while there was the uncertainty which attended the operation of these laws."