except it were cheaper than other labour and unless it lowered the cost of production. And on the other hand, any increase in the cost of labour, any scarcity of labour which cannot be compensated by an increased use of animal or mechanical labour, will tend to, and in the end will ultimately effect, a diminution of rents. Every permanent improvement of the soil, every railway and road, every bettering of the general condition of society, every facility given for production, every stimulus supplied to consumption, raises rent. The landowner sleeps, but thrives. He alone among all the recipients in the distribution of products owes everything to the labour of others, contributes nothing of his own. He inherits part of the fruits of present industry, and has appropriated the lion's share of accumulated intelligence. But if he gets it from no merit or labour of his own, he gets it by the operation of natural causes. The only hindrance to this prosperity is his too frequent wish to be wiser than nature, more eager to grasp than society is to give. Thus he has more than once succeeded in hindering the beneficence of other men, in his desire to intercept their earnings before they begin to pour them into his lap. I have already alluded to the policy which developed and the effects which flowed from the corn-laws.

What has been said applies only to those powers of the soil to whose development the landowner has contributed nothing. Those which are the result of positive outlay on his part, are constituted exactly like every other kind of fixed capital, in the immediate anticipation of profit, and like every similar investment, are followed by profit if the outlay be wise. In some cases, as for example in the draining of Whittlesea Mere and the great enclosure near

TENANCIES OF AGRICULTURAL LAND. 167

ert, the rent of such land may be entirely interest al. In the great majority of cases however, as ance in subsoil and surface draining, the outlay enders the land more fertile is very small beside tal value of its unimproved powers. Nor, again, e statements apply to payments made for the use es, and which are familiarly but improperly called These are merely payments, the ground-rent being d, for the use of capital invested in buildings, and ctly analogous to interest on advances; for the borrows a house on which he makes a periodical t, in just the same way that a borrower gets a ·which he pays a periodical interest.

CHAPTER XIII.

ious Tenancies of Agricultural Land.

as stated at the commencement of the previous that farmers' rents are almost peculiar to England. iture of rent is not altered in those countries in a different system prevails; it is only obscured he same person reaps the wages of his labour e profits of his capital, and also enjoys the proe rise in the natural value of land. There are no by which such a person can be deprived of this value and the benefits which accrue to him on session, unless government were to give him the value of his estate, and reducing him to the n of the owner of a perpetual rent-charge, were

to appropriate these progressive profits to public ends. To some extent, at least, such a relation between governments and owners is found in the Indian land tenures, where the absolute ownership lies with the king or state, just as it was the characteristic of our own feudal tenures, which held that the ultimate ownership of the soil was the property of the crown, that the relations of feudal tenancy were capable of modification or even reconstruction on this basis, and which, for a time at least, took the improved value of land into account in fines on re-grants or successions.

In many parts of Europe the occupation of the tenant is permanent; but he pays a fixed quantity in money or produce for the use of his farm, generally using the landlord's stock and seed. This kind of tenancy is called métayer in France, from the fact that the produce is ordinarily divided into equal moieties between the landowner and the cultivator. The tenure is as old as the days of republican, or at least of imperial Rome, and arose probably from the system under which a part of the lands, previously possessed by independent governments, but gradually absorbed by the conquests of the republic, were confiscated and re-granted. In mélayer tenancy, the motive to improvement is stunted by the fact that the inventor of better agricultural processes has to share the profit of his intelligence or invention with the landowner; that, in short, it produces the same discourage-. ment to agriculturists that tithes in kind do. On the other hand, it is said to be unfavourable to the landowner, whose live stock is likely to be overworked by the tenant.

Such a tenancy prevailed in England for about sixty years. The earliest agricultural records which are pre

In these manors possessed by the or most of the

served to our own time exhibit the surface of the soil divided into manors, the boundaries of which ultimately, as it seems, became parochial limits. the best and most central lands were lord, who generally had, besides, all natural meadow, if any such existed. This land he cultivated himself, or by the hands of his bailiff, using for farm-work a certain number of hired hands, and such other labour as his feudal dependants were bound to give. These dependants generally occupied lands at labour rents, the liability to labour on the manorial estate, and the right to a share in the manor estate, being, if we may judge from an enormously wide induction, mutual and invariable. The rest of the manor was occupied by free tenants, who were however, besides their obligation to do what was called suit and service in the manor-court or court-baron, liable to fixed annual rents, generally in money, but always so considerable as not to fall far short of the average rack-rent of arable land. Sometimes the parish contained more than one manor, but this is rare.

The estates of these free and serf tenants were scattered up and down the manor, generally in the form of strips containing so many furrows. There were usually also some common pasture and some common wood or turbary, in which latter the villagers had the right, under certain restrictions, of cutting or gathering fuel. The quantity occupied by these peasants was from twenty to fifty acres as a rule, and the distribution of land under these conditions was very general.

After the Great Plague of 1348 this system was rudely broken up. Labour became so costly that the land

owner could not cultivate his farm by hired hands, except at a loss. The surviving peasantry however, who lived on their labour, were incomparably better off. Wages were high, but profits were high also; and in a short time the condition of the agriculturists, who were part peasant proprietors, part labourers, was greatly improved. They could not however take in hand the large farm of the manor, not being possessed of such capital as would be sufficient to work it. Hence the temporary adoption of a system like the métayer. One of the small proprietors of the manor engaged to take the lord's farm and stock at an annual rent, generally in money, and stipulated at the end of the term, which was almost always short, to restore stock and seed, either at a fixed rate, or in the same quantity. This method of cultivation lasted, as I have said, for about sixty years, and was superseded by the growth of a hardy and prosperous yeomanry, who either purchased the land in parcels, or bargained to work it with their own capital and at a money rent.

Peasant proprietorship, i. e. the union in.the same person of ownership and occupancy, is by far the most common form in which land is distributed among civilised nations. It prevails over nearly the whole continent of Europe, and is all but universal in the United States. It is found in the Eastern world as generally as in the Western, for it is the rule in India and China. Most persons who have studied its peculiarities agree that it has great advantages, when the government is just, in elevating the character and promoting the social morality of the people. It appears to stimulate economy, to induce habits of parsimony and forethought, to render any legal relief to the poor unnecessary, and to obviate certain