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andera zineteen years lease, even when the whole supplementary capital over and above the value of the land is advanced in the first instance entirely by themselves."

Now we have already seen that there is according to the Drake's new, no basis in the fact of a superior rate of improvement to farms by tenants to the statement that landorda generally let their land at an abatement on its market value and even if there were such a basis it would be difficult probably to recognise it: for, as the Duke says, What the average rate of interest may be upon capital employed in farming it would be difficult to say;" and, that being so, it is equally difficult to say what ought to be the rate required for the use of the land, which is considered by the Duke to be the most fundamental ’ part of the capital employed by the farmer. Surely, therefore, it is not easy to come to such conclusions as the Duke has done with reference to the system of abatements that are asserted by him to be so generally practised by landlords. We have no reason to suppose that owners who act rationally-as no doubt owners, like occupiers, generally do-do not often prefer to have one individual before another as tenant farmer, and even at a pecuniary sacrifice; but the reason must be apparent—the preferred one promises by his character, his experience, his capital, or some other well-known advantageous qualification, to be by so much the better tenant of the two, and the common sense of the landowner asserts itself even in the presence of vicious laws, framed, or at least now maintained, though their tendency must be to place the man of straw on the same level as the man of substance.

But to return to our consideration of the mode and means of improvement. In what circumstances does the cultivator improve the land in the greatest degree? The Duke of Argyll, in the sentences just quoted from his

essay, asserts that the profit of the farmer is both higher and more immediately realised than the profit of the owner of the land. Let us, then, follow the steps of the illustration given. First, the land is let to the tenant at or under 3 per cent.; and, secondly, the capital lent for improvement is lent at about 3 per cent. in all those cases in which the tenant agrees to pay for improvement loans at the rate of 6 or 63 per cent.' Now, as regards the first proposition, it may be remarked that land is not solely valuable on account of its agricultural fertility, for, as everyone knows, it is let a second time occasionally for sporting purposes, and it is undoubtedly estimated at a certain value on account of the social position which it confers on its proprietor, or on the amenity it bestows on a country residence, or, indeed, as is obvious in other ways; and if it were not so, land would probably be let for agricultural purposes at a higher percentage on the purchase money than it is. But does every proprietor reap only 3 per cent. on the purchase money, or does he reap 3 per cent. on the modern valuation? Doubtless on the latter, and the difference in this country between these two ways of regarding the principle upon which the percentage is reckoned is over a few years considerable. Land, indeed, is, as the number and wealth of the population of these islands increase, constantly rising in value; so that if we regard it prospectively, and can account the future gain, it is probable that the rate at which farms are let, considering the great security, is not a low one from a proprietor's point of view. It cannot be said, then, that any argument can be founded on this basis as regards the relative rate of farmers' profits.

Again, when proprietors lend capital it is said to be at a low rate; and doubtless if the rate being 3 per cent. per annum were a perpetual one, payable by every

succeeding cultivator, it would be a very good and favourable one for the farmers. But such is not the case: the present tenant pays off both principal and interest, and the future payment of 31 per cent. or more is made by the cultivators to the proprietor in name of improved land, all of which improvement has really been effected by one tenant in course of a single, say nineteen years', lease, and the proprietor therefore has expended nothing, for the money may be obtained from the State on the security of the land.

It is, therefore, not the fact that the proprietor earns a less, or a less immediate, return for his capital than the tenant; for in all these improvements where he does not advance the funds himself-and he has no great inducement when improvement loans are to be had on easy terms to do so he actually gets them executed for nothing, and therefore their value is to him a pure gain, and does not possess the character of a percentage at all. It is said, however, that had it not been for the inherent qualities of the soil those improvements could not have been effected; and those qualities being recognised by the tenant, he utilises the capital expended during the currency of the lease to his own satisfaction, deriving from its employment a proper marketable return. That, no doubt, is often or generally quite true; but it is none the less so that he does not derive that benefit from the continual improvement of the soil which he would do if it were his own, and if he were the cultivating proprietor, and that in consequence he has not that inducement to its improvement brought so strongly before him as if he shared continually in its results, instead of expecting only to receive the marketable return for the employment of his capital.

The interest, therefore, which the cultivators of a country possess in its rapid and constant improvement,

when they are the proprietors of the soil, is lost when they are simply tenants, and expect to reap, and do reap, only a reward for their own toil and the employment of their capital. The gradual increase of population and wealth which takes place normally in a country enjoying a stable government and a settled condition, thereby raises the value of the soil for agricultural purposes; and that value ought, with respect to the highest considerations of economy, to be reaped at least chiefly by the agriculturalists, and that can be attained only in the maximum degree when they are the proprietors of the soil.

When, however, upon the other hand the agriculturalists are not only tenants, but tenants-at-will, and subject to their rents being changed at any time, then indeed there is no prospect for them of permanent improvement, and no prospect either of the land being made to produce an increasing crop by which an increasing population, whether agricultural or industrial, may be adequately clothed and fed. And, as we have already seen in Ireland, and to some extent in Britain, these unfortunate conditions are at work.

We have, therefore, before us the vices and virtues of the two systems of extensive estates farmed by tenants, and of small subdivided lands farmed by proprietors, and we see that the circumstances of their profitable existence are essentially dissimilar.

However, if we regard tenancy and proprietorship as cultivating where the country is for the most part agricultural, we shall see that where the former, as it largely is, is subject to alteration in its conditions within short periods affecting the amount of produce that falls to the cultivator, it is completely unsuccessful; and where the latter exists, even though to a limited extent, the country generally is fully cultivated, and the maximum of exer

tion in cultivation, and of prudence and thrift in saving, is exhibited by the cultivators.

The condition of contentment which thus appears to have its being in a certain secure possession of an amount of land sufficient to enable its cultivator to procure, jointly perhaps with an additional occupation, a competence for himself and his family, is one which lies at the root of social stability. As in France, where the contented cultivator tills his own land, depending on its produce alone, so elsewhere, when the inhabitants are peasant proprietors, and not industrial workers, the condition, though contented, is not rapidly a prosperous one, and the population is one verging naturally on the stationary condition. In a country such as Great Britain, however, where country life is not so attractive as in the South, the rewards of industrial life will be relatively all the more prized; and particularly will this be so when the ability to apply capital to industrial undertakings is, where mineral wealth is so abundant, so perfectly easy. We should therefore expect to find that the workmen of the North would be, on the whole, more prosperous with a comparatively small-sized holding a large garden or small field of perhaps from one quarter to half an acre, that would fitly form rather the occupation of a meagre but joyous leisure than the sphere of severe and prolonged exertion. The change that is actually taking place where there is sufficient freedom, appears generally to be towards a union of the two kinds of occupation. Where rural employments have been hitherto the sole resource, as in Norway, the inhabitants are becoming alive to the great advantage which industrial employments would present, and they are therefore successfully endeavouring to introduce manufactures by co-operative associations. In this country, upon the other hand, the desideratum is an addition to the present too exclusive town life, and

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