ABSTRACT
The expansion of the cities was also a source of revenue to ground landlords. "Buildings in Scotland are erected either on land held for perpetuity from the Crown, or on land held for perpetuity on payment to an immediate feudal superior of a certain annual feu duty." James Scott, a versatile entrepreneur, erected Bothwell Buildings on his land in central Glasgow, and sold Holm Lands to the Caledonian Railway as a site for its Central Station. The introduction of railways affords cases of special interest as regards the attitude of the landowners to industrial progress, involving complex issues of amenity and of finance. The renting of land for the erection of factories and other industrial purposes seems normally to have gone on as a matter of course. Forsyth indeed generalizes about the obstacles to industrial progress occasioned by the prevalence of absentee ownership of large estates; probably experience of the financial advantages induced a change of attitude ere long.
