farmer. If the price of produce shall continue to rise as it has done, till very lately, for the last forty years, no improvements which a tenant can be expected to execute will compensate the landlord's loss; and if, on the other hand, prices shall decline, the capital of most tenants must be exhausted in a few years, and the lands will necessarily revert to the proprietor, as has been the case of late in many instances. Hence a landholder, in agreeing to a long lease, can hardly ever assure himself, that the obligations on the part of the tenant will be fully discharged throughout its whole term, while the obligations he incurs himself may always be easily enforced. He runs the risk of great loss from a depreciation of money, but can look forward to very little benefit from a depreciation of produce, except for a few years at most. Of this advantage a generous man would seldom avail himself; and, indeed, in most instances, the advantage must be only imaginary, for it would be overbalanced by the deterioration of his property." (Sup. Encyc. Brit. art. Agr.)

4325. There are various objections made to leases of nineteen or twenty-one years. Some of these are of a feudal and aristocratical nature; such as the independence it gives the tenants who may become purse-proud and saucy under the nose of their landlord, &c. A greater objection has arisen from the depreciation of British currency during the last ten years of the eighteenth, and first ten of the nineteenth centuries. Various schemes have been suggested to counteract this evil; but the whole of them are liable to objections, and it may be safely stated, that it admits of no remedy, but the generous interference of the landlord.

SUBSECT. 4. Of the Rent and Covenants of a Lease.

4326. To avert the evils of fixed money rents, and long leases, both to landlords and tenants, the best mode known at present is the old plan of corn rents. This plan was first revived in 1811, by a pamphlet published in Cupar, which attracted considerable attention, and has led to the adoption in various parts of Scotland, of a mixed mode of paying rents, partly in corn or the price of corn, and partly in money. In hilly districts, instead of corn, wool, or the price of wool for an average of years, is sometimes fixed on. We shall quote from the same intelligent writer, on the duration of leases, his sentiments on corn rents, and subjoin his observations on covenants.

4327. Though the most equitable mode of determining the rent of lands on lease, would be to make it rise and fall with the price of corn; yet, "a rent paid in corn is liable to serious objections, and can seldom be advisable in a commercial country. It necessarily bears hardest on a tenant when he is least able to discharge it. In very bad seasons, his crop may be so scanty, as scarcely to return seed and the expenses of cultivation, and the share which he ought to receive himself, as the profits of his capital, as well as the quantity allotted to the landlord, may not exist at all. Though, in this case, if he pays a money rent, his loss may be considerable, it may be twice or three times greater if the rent is to be paid in corn, or according to the high price of such seasons. In less favorable years, which often occur in the variable climate of Britain, a corn rent would, in numerous instances, absorb nearly the whole free or disposable produce, as is by no means uncommon to find the gross produce of even good land reduced from twenty to fifty per cent. below an average, in particular seasons. And it ought to be considered, in regard to the landlord himself, that his income would thus be doubled or trebled, at a time when all other classes were suffering from scarcity and consequent dearth; while, in times of plenty and cheapness, he might find it difficult to make his expenses correspond with the great diminution of his receipts. It is of much importance to both parties, that the amount of the rent should vary as little as possible from any unforeseen causes, though tenants in general would be perhaps the most injured by such fluctuations.

4328. To obviate these and other objections to a corn rent, and to do equal justice at all times to both landlord and tenant, a plan has been lately suggested for converting the corn into money, adopting for its price, not the price of the year for which the rent is payable, but the average price of a certain number of years. The rent, according to this plan, may be calculated every year, by omitting the first year of the series, and adding a new one; or, it may continue the same for a certain number of years, and then be fixed according to a new average. Let us suppose the lease to be for twenty-one years, the average agreed on being seven years, and the first year's rent, that is, the price of so many quarters of corn, will be calculated from the average price of the crop of that year, and of the six years preceding. If it be meant to take a new average for the second and every succeeding year's rent, all that is necessary is, to strike off the first of these seven years, adding the year for which the rent is payable, and so on during all the years of the lease. But this labor, slight as it is, may be dispensed with, by continuing the rent without variation for the first seven years of the lease according to the average price of the seven years immediately preceding its commencement, and, at the end of this period, fixing a new rent, according to the average price of the seven years just expired, to continue for the next seven years.

Thus, in the course of twenty-one years, the rent would be calculated only

three times; and for whatever quantity of corn the parties had agreed, the money payments would be equal to the average price of fourteen years of the lease itself, and of the seven years preceding it; and the price of the last seven years of the old lease, would determine the rent during the first seven years of the new one.

4329. The landlord and tenant could not suffer, it has been thought, either from bad seasons or any change in the value of the currency, should such a lease as this be extended to several periods of twenty-one years. The quantity of corn to be taken as rent, is the only point that would require to be settled at the commencement of each of those periods; and though this would no doubt be greater or less, according to the state of the lands at the time, yet it may be expected, that in the twenty-one years preceding, all the tenant's judicious expenditure had been fully replaced. Instead of the twofold difficulty in fixing a rent for a long lease, arising from uncertainty as to the quantity of produce, which must depend on the state of improvement, and still more perhaps from the variations in the price of that produce, the latter objection is entirely removed by this plan; and in all cases where land is already brought to a high degree of fertility, the question about the quantity of produce may likewise be dispensed with.

4330. If the corn rent plan be applied to leases of nineteen or twenty-one years, the inconvenience resulting from uncertainty as to the amount of rent, as well as other difficulties which must necessarily attend it, would be as great perhaps as any advantages which it holds out to either of the parties. If it be said that a rent, determined by a seven year's average, could not suddenly nor materially alter, this is at once to admit the inutility of the con. trivance. The first thing which must strike every practical man is, that corn is not the only produce of a farm, and in most parts of Britain, perhaps not the principal source from which rent is paid; and there is no authentic record of the prices of butcher meat, wool, cheese, butter, and other articles in every county to refer to, as there is of corn. This is not the place to inquire whether the price of corn regulates the price of all the other products of land, in a country whose statute books are full of duties, bounties, drawbacks, &c. to say nothing of its internal regulations; but it is sufficiently evident, that if corn does possess this power, its price operates too slowly on that of other products to serve as a just criterion for determining rent on a lease of this duration. Besides, in the progress of agriculture, new species or varieties of the cerealia themselves are established even in so short a period as twenty-one years, the prices of which may be very different from that of the corn specified in the lease. What security for a full rent, for instance, would it give to a landlord, to make the rent payable according to the price of barley, when the tenant might find it more for his interest to cultivate some of the varieties of summer wheat, lately brought from the continent? or, according to the price of a particular variety of oats, when, within a few years, we have seen all the old varieties superseded throughout extensive districts, by the introduction of a new one, the potatoe-oat, which may not be more permanent than those that preceded it? There can be no impropriety, indeed, in adopting this plan, for ascertaining the rent of land kept always in tillage; but it would be idle to expect any important benefits from it, during such a lease as we have mentioned.

4331. The corn rent plan, in the case of much longer leases, will no doubt diminish the evils which we think are inseparable from them, but it cannot possibly reach some of the most considerable. Its utmost effect is to secure to the landholder a rent which shall in all time to come be an adequate rent, according to the state of the lands and the mode of cultivation known at the date of the lease. But it can make no provision that will apply to the enlargement of the gross produce from the future improvement of the lands themselves, or of the disposable produce from the invention of machinery and other plans for encouraging labor. And the objections just stated, in reference to a lease of twenty-one years, evidently apply much more forcibly to one of two or three times that length. Old corn-rents, though much higher at present than old money-rents, are seldom or never so high as the rents could now be paid on a lease of twenty-one years. But, independent of these considerations, which more immediately bear upon the interests of the parties themselves, one insuperable objection to all such leases is, that they partake too much of the nature of entails, and depart too far from that commercial character which is most favorable to the investment of capital, and consequently to the greatest increase of land produce.

4332. Alease for a term of years is not, in all cases, a sufficient encouragement to spirited cultivation; its covenants in respect to the management of the lands may be injudicious; the tenant may be so strictly confined to a particular mode of culture, or a particular course of crops, as not to be able to avail himself of the beneficial discoveries which a progressive state of agriculture never fails to introduce. Or, on the other hand, though this is much more rare, the tenant may be left so entirely at liberty, that either the necessity of his circumstances, during the currency of the lease, or his interest towards its expiration, may lead him to exhaust the soil, instead of rendering it more productive. When a lease therefore is either redundant or deficient in this respect; where it either permits the lands to

be deteriorated or prevents their improvement; the connection between landlord and tenant is formed upon other views, and regulated by some other principle, than the general one on which we think it should be founded.

4333. Restrictive covenants are always necessary to the security of the landlord, notwithstanding the high authority of Dr. Smith to the contrary, and in some cases beneficial to the tenant. Their expediency cannot well be questioned in those parts of the country where an improved system of agriculture has made little progress. A landholder, assisted by the advice of experienced men in framing these covenants, cannot adopt any easy or less offensive plan for the improvement of his property, and the ultimate advantages of his tenantry. Even in the best cultivated districts, while farms continue to be let to the highest responsible offerers, a few restrictive covenants cannot be dispensed with. The supposed interest of the tenant is too feeble a security for correct management, even during the earlier part of a lease, and in the latter part of it, it is thought to be his interest, in most cases, to exhaust the soil as much as possible, not only for the sake of immediate profit, but frequently in order to deter competitors, and thus to obtain a renewal of his lease at a rent somewhat less than the lands would otherwise bring.

4334. With tenants at will, and such as hold on short leases, restrictive covenants are more necessary than with tenants on leases of nineteen or twenty years; but in many instances, they are too numerous and complicated, and sometimes even inconsistent with the best courses of modern husbandry The great error lies, in prescribing rules by which a tenant is positively required to act, not in prohibiting such practices and such crops as experience has not sanctioned. The improved knowledge, and the liberality of the age, have now expunged the most objectionable of these covenants; and throughout whole counties, almost the only restriction in reference to the course of crops is, that the tenant shall not take two culmiferous crops, ripening their seeds in close succession. This single stipulation, combined with the obligation to consume the straw upon the farm, and to apply to it all the manure made from its produce, is sufficient not only to protect the land. from exhaustion, but to ensure in a great measure its regular cultivation; for half the farm at least must, in this case, be always under either fallow or green crops. The only other necessary covenant, when the soil is naturally too weak for carrying annual crops without intermission, is, that a certain portion of the land shall be always in grass, not to be cut for hay but depastured. According to the extent of this will be the interval between the succession of corn crops on the same fields; if it is agreed that half the farm, for instance, shall always be under grass, there can be only two crops of corn from the same field in six years. In this case not more than two-sixths being in corn, one-sixth in green crops or fallow, and three-sixths in clover or grasses, it becomes almost impossible to exhaust any soil at all fitted for tillage. There are few indeed that do not gradually become more fertile under this course of cropping. It is sufficiently evident, that other covenants are necessary in particular circumstances; such as permission to dispose of straw, hay, and other crops from which manure is made, when a quantity of manure equal to what they would have furnished is got from other places; and a prohibition against converting rich old grazing lands or meadows into corn lands. In this place we speak only of general rules, such as are applicable to perhaps nine-tenths of all the arable land of Britain, and such as are actually observed in our best cultivated counties.

4335. For the last four years of a lease, the same covenants are generally sufficient, only they require to be applied with more precision. Instead of taking for granted, that the proportion of the farm that cannot be under corn will be properly cultivated, from the tenant's regard to his own interest, it becomes necessary to make him bound to this effect in express terms; the object generally being to enable the tenant, upon a new lease, to carry on the cultivation of the lands, as if the former lease had not terminated. What these additional stipulations should be, must depend in part on the season of the year at which the new lease commences, and in part on the course of crops best adapted to the soil, and the particular circumstances of every farm.

4336. With respect to the form of a lease, as no one form would suit every district, nothing specific can be laid down with advantage. The lawyers of every estate have particular forms, and it is easy for them, in concert with the proprietor or manager, to obliterate useless or injurious restrictions, and substitute such as may be deemed best for the estate, or in harmony with the progress of the age." (Sup. Encyc. Brit. art. Agr.)

SUBSECT. 5. Of receiving Rents.

4337. The business of receiving the rents and profits of a landed estate, simple as it may seem, is subject to analysis, and entitled to consideration. Indeed, on large properties, on which not farm rents only, but various other profits are to be received; as cottage rents, tithe compositions, chief rents, and perhaps, quit rents of copyhold lands; the business becomes so complex as to require to be methodised and simplified, in order to obtain the requisite facility and dispatch. This is generally best effected by appointing distinct days, or distinct parts of the day, for each receipt, so that the different tenants and suitors may know their hours of attendance.

4338. The business of holding manor courts depends on whether they are held of right, or merely by custom. If the copyhold tenure is so far worn out in any manor, that there are not two ancient or feudal tenants remaining within it, the court has lost its legal power; it cannot by right, take cognizance of crimes, nor enforce amerciaments. Nevertheless, manorial courts have their uses, in regulating farm roads, driftways, and watercourses, and in preventing nuisances of different kinds within a manor; and it is generally right to preserve the custom of holding them for these purposes.

4339. Where copyhold courts remain in force, and where legal forms are to be observed, a law" steward of the manor" is proper to hold them. It is not necessary, however,

that courts of this kind should interfere with the receipt of farm rents; or that a business of this nature should in any way clash with the general receivership of the estate. Employ an attorney to hold courts, as a surveyor to arbitrate disputes, or an engineer to plan works of improvement.

4340. The propriety of having fixed days for receiving the rents of farms is evident, and some consideration is required to determine on the season of the year for holding them, so as not to oblige the farmer to forced sales of his produce. In England and Ireland, farm rents are generally due at Ladyday and Michaelmas, and in Scotland at Candlemas and Lammas. But the proper times of paying them depend on the marketable produce of an estate, and on the season of the year at which it goes in common course, and with the best advantage to market. A tenant should never be forced to sell his produce with disadvantage; nor when he has received his money for it, ought he to be at a loss for an opportunity of discharging his debt to his landlord. On corn-farm estates, or those whose lands are kept in a state of mixed cultivation, which comprise the great mass of farm lands in this kingdom, Michaelmas may be considered as one of the worst times of the year, at which to call upon tenants for their rents. It is at the close (or, in the northern provinces, perhaps at the height) of harvest, when the farmers' pockets are drained by extra labor, and when they have not yet had time to thresh out their crops to replenish them; nor is the summer's grass at that season yet consumed, nor off-going stock, perhaps, yet ready for market. In Norfolk, Marshal found the end of February or beginning of March, a very fit time to pay the half year's rent due at Michaelmas; and June for paying those due at Ladyday. In some districts of the north it used to be the custom not to demand the first half year's rent, till the tenant was a year in his farm, by which means he had the use during his lease of nearly a year's rent in addition to his actual capital. But farmers there, being now considered as possessed of more wealth than formerly, the first half year's rent of the lease is paid nine months after possession, and the last half year's rent of the term on or immediately before its expiry.

4341. The proper days for receiving rents are to be sought for in the local circumstances of an estate, and the district in which it lies: most especially in the fairs of the neighborhood at that season; and in other stated times, at which the tenants are accustomed, in conformity with the practice of the country, to receive for their dairy produce, or other articles, delivered in to dealers; fixing the rent days, immediately after these days of imbursement.

4342. On the subject of arrears, a good deal has been said by Marshal; but it is one of those which may very safely be left to the good sense and discretion of the proprietor ..or his manager.

SECT. III. of Keeping and Auditing Accounts.

4343. Clearness and brevity constitute the excellence of accounts, and these excellencies are only to be obtained by simplicity of method. Where lands lie in detached estates so as to require different receivers, a separate account is necessarily required for each receivership; but to preserve this simplicity and clearness, it is necessary that the several sets should be precisely in the same form.

4344. The ground-work of the accounts peculiar to a landed estate, is the rent-roll : from this receiving rentals are to be taken, and with these and the miscellaneous receipts and disbursements incident to the estate, an account current is to be annually made

out.

4345. The receiving rental, or particulars which a receiver wants to see, at one view, when receiving the rents of an estate under judicious management, where rents are regularly received,—and where occupiers pay taxes and do ordinary repairs, are few: the name of the farm, the name of the tenant, and the amount of his half year's rent, only are required. But upon an estate, on which arrears are suffered to remain, and on which matters of account are liable to take place, a greater number of particulars are necessary; as the name of the farm, of the tenant, his arrears, his half year's rent, any other charge against him, any allowance to be made him, and the neat sum receivable, leaving a blank for the sum received and another for the arrear left.

4346. Accounts current are required to be delivered in annually by the acting manager, who ought generally to be the receiver. If the current receipts and disbursements are numerous, as where extensive improvements are going on, and woods, mines, quarries, &c. in hand, such accounts may be given in monthly which will show the progress of the several concerns, and simplify the business at the end of the year.

4347. On the best managed estates it is usual, besides the books which have been mentioned, to keep a ledger; opening separate accounts for farm lands, woods, mines, quarries, waters, houses and their appurtenances, public works, &c. : and where a proprietor has several detached estates, besides such accounts being kept on each, one master ledger contains accounts for each property. This, indeed, is nothing but an obvious

application of mercantile book-keeping to territorial property, the advantages of which cannot but be as great in the one case as in the other.

4348. In auditing estate accounts, the rent accounts are to be checked with the arrears of the preceding year; the column of rents with the rent-roll, corrected up to the last term of entry in order to comprise the fresh lettings, and the columns of account with the particulars; those of allowances being signed by the respective tenants.

4349. The monthly accounts of receipts and disbursements, as well as the annual payments, are to be compared with vouchers. The receipts are checked by deeds of sale, contracts, and other written agreements, the awards of referees, or the estimates of surveyors, the market prices of produce, &c. &c. ; the receiver, in every case, identifying the person, from whom each sum was received. Each disbursement requires a direct and sufficient voucher, endorsed and numbered; with a corresponding number affixed to the charge in the account; so that they may be readily compared.

4350. The most essential part of the office of an auditor is that of entering into the merits of each receipt and payment; and considering whether the charges correspond with the purposes for which they are made; and whether the several sums received are adequate to the respective matters disposed of; by these means detecting, and thenceforward preventing, imposition and connivance. This, however, is an office which no one but a proprietor, or other person who has been conversant with the transactions that have taken place upon the estate, and who has a competent knowledge of rural concerns, can properly perform. It may therefore be right to repeat, that if a proprietor has not yet acquired a competent knowledge of his own territorial concerns, to form an adequate judgment of the different entries in his manager's account, let him call in the assistance of those who are conversant in rural affairs, to enable him to judge of any particular parts that may seem to require it; and not set his hand to an account which he does not clearly understand; nor authorize another to sign it, who may have less knowledge than he has of its merits.

BOOK V.

OF THE SELECTION, HIRING, AND STOCKING OF FARMS.

4351. Farms or lands let out to men who cultivate it as a business or profession, exist in all highly civilised countries. Sometimes the farmer or tenant pays to the proprietor or landlord a proportion of the produce, determined yearly, or as the crops ripen; and sometimes he pays a fixed quantity of produce, or labor, or money, or part of each of these. In Britain, where farming, as a profession, is carried to a higher degree of perfection than in any other country, the connection between landlord and tenant is regularly defined by particular agreements and general laws; and the latter, on entering on a farm, engages to pay a fixed sum for its use for a certain number of years. This sum is fixed according to the estimated value of the land; but being fixed, and for a certain time, it admits of no abatement in proportion to the quantity or value of the produce, as in the proportional or metayer system, general in most countries (265. and 585.); and hence the necessity of a farmer maturely considering every circumstance connected with a farm before he becomes its tenant. The subjects of consideration form the business of this Book, and naturally divide themselves into such as relate to the farm; to the farmer; and to the landlord.

CHAP. I.

Of the Circumstances of a Farm necessary to be considered by a proposed Tenant. 4352. Whoever intends to become a professional, or rent-paying farmer, will, in searching for a farm, find it necessary to attend to a great variety of considerations. Those of the greatest importance may be included under climate, soil and subsoil, character of surface, topographical position, extent, buildings, roads, fields, tenure, rent, and outgoings. In The Code of Agriculture, a more valuable collection of facts as to these points is brought together than in any other work, and from it, therefore, we shall select the greater part of the following sections.