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I did not see the land question as clearly on this 1865 visit, as I did later; but the extinction of the old portioners and the wealth acquired by the moneyed man of Melrose gave me cause for thinking. A visit to Glasgow and to the relatives of my sister-in-law opened out a different vista to me.
I recollect in old days these portioners used to make moonlight, flittings and disappear, or they sold off their holdings openly and went to America, meaning the United States. The tendency was to buy up these portions, and a considerable estate could be built up by any shrewd man who had money, or the command of it. Before we left Melrose in 1839, Mr. C had possession of a good deal of land.
Death will soon put him in possession of a fair estate, if he hath it not already; old Lady Girnington an excellent person, excepting that her inveterate ill-nature rendered her intolerable to the whole world is probably dead by this time. Six heirs portioners have successively died to make her wealthy. I know the estates well; they march with my own a noble property."
Tracing the Fairbairns still further back, we find several of them occupying the station of "portioners," or small lairds, at Earlston on the Tweed, where the family had been settled since the days of the Solemn League and Covenant. By his mother's side, the subject of our memoir is supposed to be descended from the ancient Border family of Douglas.
Perhaps it is because our own is so good. Kiels was ours three hundred years, and my grandfather was good-brother to an earl a not very good nor honest lord they say and the Turners were only portioners and tenants as far back as we ken."
I think the portioners were all sold out before he could enter the field, and the fate of these Melrose people has thoroughly emphasized for me the importance of having our South Australian workmen's blocks, the glory of Mr. Cotton's life, maintained always on the same footing of perpetual lease dependent on residence.
The county voters were mostly tenant farmers, who generally voted with their landlords. The race of portioners, or small proprietors, was dying out in shire, as it is in all the British island, and large proprietors were very much opposed to Cross Hall, on account of his loose views as to the rights of property.
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