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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



has taken so wide a rang;e as even to hazard anything 

 like serious faihire. This may be high praise, but it is 

 strictly true. To whatever degree Mr. Grey's instru- 

 mentality may have raised the value of the property 

 under his care, it has been at no risk or loss. On 

 the contrary, it came out at the Hexham Club 

 Meeting, the other day, that when he assumed his ofBce 

 on the Hospital Estates the tenants in the North were 

 some six or seven thousand pounds in arrear of rent. 

 At the recent audit there was only thirty pounds out- 

 standing. Bettei times and better prices have no doubt 

 had a great deal to do with these altered circumstances ; 

 but a better management quite as much, or more. 



And how has this been brought about ? Long leases 

 and liberal covenants, plenty of capital and a high 

 order of intelligence, are the commonly accepted re- 

 quirements for setting about farming as they do in the 

 North. To the advantage of some of these,? at any 

 rate, we are becoming more and more susceptible. 

 The favourite axiom just now in such matters is that 

 you can scarcely give a man too much liberty of action. 

 Let him only bring a good character with him, and 

 something to back it, and then the less you interfere 

 ■with him the belter. In these stirring times, four-course 

 rotations, and such like formalities, are fast going out of 

 fashion ; and it is simply an absurdity to bind a tenant 

 down to do as his forefathers did. There seems to us to 

 be a great deal of common sense in such an argument, 

 but our purpose here is more to see what Mr. Grey thinks 

 of it — an authority who, as we have already mentioned, 

 is armed with ample experience to think for both one 

 and the other. It is so that he puts it : " Very much 

 has been said and written of late in recommendation 

 of letting land with free open covenants, leaving with- 

 out restriction the tenant to do and act as he chooses. 

 There is some foundation for such an opinion ; because, 

 if everybody believes, as I do, that the highest state of 

 cultivation, that the most improved mode of farming, 

 is most productive to the tenant, then, you see, in 

 leaving a tenant at liberty to farm as he likes, if he 

 knows that the higher the farming the better for him- 

 self, he is sui-e to farm in that way ; and that must be 

 also conducive to the good of the landlord. But I need 

 not tell you that in farming, as in other branches, 

 there are men who fail to do that which is most con- 

 ducive to their own interests ; men who tail, sometimes 

 from ignorance and from want of judgment ; some, 

 unluckily, from want of sufficient capital ; many, be- 

 cause they are by nature and in their hearts penny wise 

 and pound foolish, and will not extend, with that 

 liberality with which they ought to do, the benefits of 

 their cultivation, which might make them a good re- 

 turn. These opinions, which would lead farmers to do 

 as they pleased, are much more fitted for the system of 

 letting by annual tenure than by lease. If a landlord 

 has a tenant occupying annually, and if he sees that he 

 has got a tenant who is inclined to take an undue ad- 

 vantage of his land by cultivating in such a manner as 

 is not likely to return to the landlord his property in 

 equally good condition as when he let it, and if he sees 

 the man would be inclined to break up a fine rich old 

 grass pasture, because he would have the benefit of a 

 few years' cropping, with very little expense ; or if the 

 man be inclined to follow a system of cropping on the 

 best portion of his land, and leaving the inferior, be- 

 cause it would require more cultivation to keep it up 

 to the mark, so that it may be difficult to reclaim ; on 

 this the landlord can draw the check cord, and give his 

 tenant notice to quit. It is not so with the landlord 

 who agrees upon a term of nineteen or twenty years. 

 He may make the very best selection possible of a 



tenant j he may find a man in whom he has the 

 greatest confidence, both for judgment and integrity ; 

 but who can tell where this excellent tenant may be at 

 the end of this year, and who may succeed him ? 

 Many a respectable man has a profligate son ; and 

 leases, you know, are heritable property ; and at the 

 death of the tenant the farms may go into the hands of 

 those who know nothing at all about their manage- 

 ment." 



This certainly appears to us to be taking the case the 

 wrong way. Surely, if immediate control bn neces- 

 sary — if you want a hold on a man — if anybody is 

 likely to do you injustice — it must be such a one who 

 has but a passing and very fleeting interest in your 

 property. There is plenty of precedent on record to 

 show what damage a yearly tenant may do, be he so 

 inclined, before you can possibly get rid of him. 

 The only thing, in fact, that would keep such 

 an occupier at all in check, would be the fear of the 

 covenants he had agreed to, and the customs he had 

 promised to observe. We should be the last to write 

 up stringent conditions for either, but if a choice must 

 be made between the two, as to who should have the 

 more liberty to do as ' he pleased with the land, we 

 should decidedly give it in favour of the one holding it 

 for the longer term. He has a permanent interest in 

 the place: his own ultimate advantage depends upon 

 his giving it fair play ; and no one would suffer so 

 much as himself by adopting any other system. But, 

 further than tliis, Mr. Grey, as a cautious man, has to 

 guard against the contingency of death, and the suc- 

 cession of a tenant that in the first instance would not 

 have been approved, or trusted to an equal extent. 

 Perhaps, as many will say, you cannot be too careful 

 in such a matter, and hence the necessity for still 

 making a lease more or less dictatorial on the method 

 of cultivation; while those who rely on no such agree- 

 ment, but go rather on each other's word and 

 honour, have far more freedom and licence to pro- 

 gress with the times. This is in numerous instances 

 the fact ; but we scarcely think that Mr. Grey intended 

 to put it so. Here, in the south, much of our best 

 farming is practised without a lease. In the north it 

 is the reverse. But we must hear Mr. Grey out : — 

 " Is it, therefore, rea^^onable — and every one who 

 hears me will agree with me in saying that to be per- 

 manent and useful every agi'eement should be founded 

 on justice and reason — is it reasonable in such a case 

 that the landlord's property should go into the hands of 

 a person who is not capable of managing it, and that 

 he should have no means of restricting such person in 

 mismanaging and spoiling his property ? And tiiese re- 

 strictions are more essentially necessary when the term 

 comes near to an end. In such cases, whatever liberty 

 may be given — and I quite agree with the principle 

 that it would be great presumption in any man to pre- 

 scribe a course of management to be strictly adhered 

 to during the whole coui'se of the lease — yet I contend 

 that it is the right of the landlord, and that he has a 

 right to claim and receive such power over the ma- 

 nagement as shall, in some measure at least, restore to 

 him his land in an equally good condition as when he 

 let it." Much of this would apply equally to the 

 original tenant as it would to his successor. We ima- 

 gine that in almost any case certain provision would 

 be made for leaving the land in proper condition. 

 What we the rather complain of, and what strikes us 

 as not quite fair, is that by this showing, a good tenant 

 should be treated and bound down like a bad one, 

 simply from the remote contingency of a change, not 

 necessarily for the worse, occurring. 



