must go a little further, and show how
seriously the manufacturer of British food
will be checked if those tenants (farmers who
really understand the importance of a sound
system of tenancy) from timidity or apathy
leave the question in the hands of the red-
tape routinists of the legal profession; in the
hands of lawyers excelling in forging fetters
for rogues, detecting flaws, and pursuing
debtors, but perfectly innocent of the simple
means required to develop intelligence and
enterprise in agricultural pursuits by letting
tenants alone.  This land-agent is not
content with prescribing a model of cultivation
to which no independent farmer would
submit; of forbidding absolutely the cultivation
of certain profitable crops, and taxing the
tenant over and above his rent with the
cartage of materials for repairs of the
landlord's buildings, with other clauses equally
offensive to the best class of tenants, but he
devotes a series of clauses to apportioning
the compensation the tenant from year to
year shall receive if he is so silly as to make
drains, hedges, roads, and farm-buildings, or
other works which it is the part of a landlord
to provide, as of the farmer to find
implements for his labourers. The proportion
assigned being about seventy-five per cent
under the real value, and the intention being
evidently to transfer from the shoulders of the
landlord to tenant on most unfair terms, the
execution of the permanent improvement of
the land; for the model lease under
consideration gives the tenant seven years as
the value of drains, which parliament
estimates to the landlord at twenty-two.

When the feudal tenure prevailed, the grant
of land was a favour, and rent was the
smallest part of the consideration.  There
are estates where the feudal feeling still
prevails, and where the landlord is willing to
take a rent less than the value of the land
for the sake of political influence.  There,
improvements, clean enclosures, and high
farming are not to be expected; and such a
landlord may be a very kind man, but is
certainly no patriot.

There are other estates where the general
intelligence of the tenants is of so low an
order—where they are so ignorant and so
prejudiced, that they are not as a body
to be trusted with a lease.  We have known
such tenantry in Cheshire and Lancashire,
in Wales, in Kent and in Surrey.  For,
although a lease is a great security for a
good tenant, it is no protection against a bad
one.  In such districts the landlord must
make each tenancy the subject of a separate
bargain, agree for each tenant's improvement,
and only grant leases where he can trust the
man, knowing that he has both skill and
capital.

And if the Cheshire lawyer, and the servile
speakers who followed, praising his tenancy
at will had made agreements for terms of five
years, or leases for seven, fourteen, and
twenty-one, the rule and principle of agricultural
improvement, and tenancy at will the
unfortunate exception rendered necessary by
the poverty, ignorance and dishonesty of
Cheshire farmers, then the questions might
have been left to be debated as a local quarrel
between the tenants and the legal bailiff, to
whom they had to do suit and service.

But when it is proposed to found the
agricultural improvement of a country on the
principle of encamping for a year, instead
of settling for life—on the ground that
Cheshire is wet and Norfolk dry; that in
Cheshire they make cheese, as well as
corn and beef, while in Norfolk they only
make beef, mutton, and corn—we must
travel back, and follow out the history of
British agriculture for the last hundred
years.  And when through local tradition
and scattered obscure volumes we have the
change from farming for mere existence to
the large returns of modern times—twenty-
five tons of turnips, forty-eight bushels of
wheat, fifty-six bushels of barley to the acre—
and stock in proportion—one universal rule
will be found to prevail, viz., long terms of
tenancy.

The Lothians in Scotland, the Holkham
Estates in Norfolk, the Bedford Estates in
Beds, are the centres from which all the
important agricultural improvements of
this century have spread: originated,
supported, and propagated by the influence of
wise landlords, who secure the best class of
tenants, by providing them with the needful,
fixed material for farming, and showing them
a sure return for their investment of floating
capital in terms of years long enough to work
the rotations of good cultivation.  Some will
say rashly—look to Lincolnshire—to the
Yarborough Estates, but there the absence
of a lease is against the landlord and in favour
of the tenants.  The tenants, few in number,
are bred on the soil.  They hold, virtually,
for life. No tenant has ever been dispossessed
for pique or quarrel.  A notice to quit—rent
being paid—is almost unknown, and the
custom of the country secures
compensation.

As we have said, there may be bad farming
with long leases, but there can be no good
farming without security of tenure for a
full rotation, at least.  With a story we will
conclude.

An earl, a most liberal and intelligent
landlord, a year or so back, was looking at
a farm held on a twenty-one years' lease, of
which seven years only were expired;
admiring the land, without a weed, and heavy
crops where ragged sheep starved in his
grandfather's time.  Turning to the tenant he
asked, "How is it that without the old plan
of naked fallows you yet have crops every
year?"

"Because, my lord, I put in every year
more than I take out."

"And suppose," the earl continued, "I was