_Lochlea_, 21_st June_, 1783.

DEAR SIR,

My father received your favour of the 10th current, and as he has been
for some months very poorly in health, and is in his own opinion (and
indeed, in almost everybody's else) in a dying condition, he has only,
with great difficulty, written a few farewell lines to each of his
brothers-in-law. For this melancholy reason, I now hold the pen for
him to thank you for your kind letter, and to assure you, Sir, that it
shall not be my fault if my father's correspondence in the north die
with him. My brother writes to John Caird, and to him I must refer you
for the news of our family.

I shall only trouble you with a few particulars relative to the
wretched state of this country. Our markets are exceedingly high;
oatmeal 17d. and 18d. per peck, and not to be gotten even at that
price. We have indeed been pretty well supplied with quantities of
white peas from England and elsewhere, but that resource is likely to
fail us, and what will become of us then, particularly the very
poorest sort, Heaven only knows. This country, till of late, was
flourishing incredibly in the manufacture of silk, lawn, and
carpet-weaving; and we are still carrying on a good deal in that way,
but much reduced from what it was. We had also a fine trade in the
shoe way, but now entirely ruined, and hundreds driven to a starving
condition on account of it. Farming is also at a very low ebb with us.
Our lands, generally speaking, are mountainous and barren; and our
landholders, full of ideas of farming gathered from the English and
the Lothians, and other rich soils in Scotland, make no allowance for
the odds of the quality of land, and consequently stretch us much
beyond what in the event we will be found able to pay. We are also
much at a loss for want of proper methods in our improvements of
farming. Necessity compels us to leave our old schemes, and few of us
have opportunities of being well informed in new ones. In short, my
dear Sir, since the unfortunate beginning of this American war, and
its as unfortunate conclusion, this country has been, and still is,
decaying very fast. Even in higher life, a couple of our Ayrshire
noblemen, and the major part of our knights and squires, are all
insolvent. A miserable job of a Douglas, Heron, and Co.'s bank, which
no doubt you heard of, has undone numbers of them; and imitating
English and French, and other foreign luxuries and fopperies, has
ruined as many more.