The farming class, if it be not a misnomer to call them farmers, usually lived in groups of such huts as are described above, and tilled their land more or less in common. The system chiefly in vogue was the “run rig” system, under which exchange of ground took place every year. The more important of their crude implements were also held in common, and as these could only be used by one person at a time—as, also, it was often well on in the spring before any thought of tillage occurred to them or the condition of their water-logged soil would permit of it, and as much time was often lost in deciding the rotation in the use of the implements—the return in the good years was only just sufficient for their wants. As the bad years were generally twice as numerous as the good years, the conditions of the rural workers were generally most miserable. Ill-treated Nature, receiving no encouragement from man save the “tickling of her face with a stick,” refused to give of her bounty, and the people who depended on her for life suffered accordingly. A condition of continual hunger was the lot of the labourers who had no land to till. They were often forced to depend for food on the roots and berries they could gather in the woods; the scraps which went to feed the laird’s pigs were luxuries which only came their way at long intervals. Work was intermittent; it was poorly paid, for money was even scarcer than food. The only landless men who had what might be termed a decent living wage for the period were the miners. They received about a shilling a day; but, in return, they sold themselves into serfdom, for, from the beginning of the seventeenth century until the closing year of the eighteenth, no man, woman, or child who once entered a mine to work in it could leave it again. If the mine was sold the sale carried with it the right to their labour; they were bondslaves until death, the great emancipator, burst their shackles and set them free for ever. On the large farms, which became more numerous during the eighteenth century, ploughmen received the truly magnificent salary of 35/ a year, with one or two perquisites, of which one was a pair of boots. The ploughman’s daughter, if she went to the farm to assist the farmer’s wife and daughters with the cows, received, as a reward for her labour, 13/4 a year, a piece of coarse cloth for an apron, and a pair of shoes. In the towns the conditions were little better. In the early years of the eighteenth century a succession of bad years brought distress to all sections of the populace. There was much unrest, which was fanned into flame by the passing of the Act of Union in 1707, when a considerable amount of rioting took place in various parts of the country. In addition, the foreign trade of the country had been ruined by the English Navigation Act of 1660, which provided that all trade with the English Colonies should be carried in English ships alone.