he could find a sheltered and unoccupied spot.  No doubt many of the sub-tenants, even where they held originally by base and uncertain services and at the will of their superior, came in time, like the English copyholder, to have a generally-recognized right to the permanent possession of their holdings, while custom tended to fix the character and quantity of their services.  The population was not numerous, and it was probably not difficult for every man to secure a plot of land of some sort.

The crofters of to-day have lost for the most part the traditions of the drawbacks and hardships of this ancient system, with its oppressive services, to which many of their ancestors were subject, and have commonly retained only the tradition of the right which every clansman had to some portion of the clan lands.  In 1745 the clan organizations were abolished and the chiefs transformed into landlords and invested with the fee-simple of the land.  But, while changes were gradually made on some estates in the direction of conformity to the English system, most of the old customary rights of the people continued to be recognized.  The tenant was commonly allowed to occupy his holding from year to year without interruption.  Money rent gradually took the place of service or rent in kind, but the amount exacted does not seem to have been often increased arbitrarily.  The rights of common, which were often of great value, were respected.

The descendants and successors, however, of the old Scotch lairds did not always display the same regard for prescriptive rights and usages.  In some cases the extravagance and bankruptcy of the old owners caused the titles to pass to Englishmen, while in others the inheritors of the estates were more and more inclined to insist upon their legal rights and to introduce in the management of their property rules similar to those in use in England.  Early in the present century sheep-farming was found to be profitable, and many large areas of glen and mountain were cleared of the greater part of their population and converted into sheep-farms.  Many of the mountainous parts of Scotland are of little use for agricultural purposes.  Formerly the crofters used large tracts as summer pastures for their small herds of inferior stock.  By and by the proprietors found that large droves of better breeds of sheep could be kept on these mountain-pastures.  The crofters were too poor to undertake the management of the large sheep-farms into which it was apparently most profitable to divide these mountain-lands, and sheep-farmers from the south became the tenants.  By introducing sheep-farming on a large scale the landlords were able, they claimed, to use hundreds of thousands of acres which before were of comparatively little value.  The large flocks of sheep could not, however, be kept without having the lower slopes of the mountains on which to winter.  It was these slopes that the crofters commonly used for pasture,