THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



385 



of land by teuder. " If an estate were viewed simply 

 with reference to the utmost rent it would yield, the 

 agent and solicitor, properly instructed, could do all 

 that was necessary. It would bo a matter of letting by 

 tender or skilfully-drawn covenants, professing to cover 

 all tho claims of a long lease, bringing all contingen- 

 cies on eitlier side down to aline beyond which neither 

 party was legally liable." Wth, however, the land- 

 loi'd of the present age in his eye, " who has become 

 practically acquainted with modern farming," 8. G. O. 

 is inclined to looii with but little favour on this system 

 of letting. As he says : ".A tenant will only have ob- 

 tained his farm by outbidding other competitors for it. 

 We all know the weakness of human nature when ex- 

 posed to the allurements of a sale by auction; how 

 men will buy for the mere sake of buying, with little 

 reference to the question of the value of what is bouglit. 

 When the lots come home, then comes the liour of re- 

 flection, of conviction, of folly. A landlord by the 

 tender system may obtain a very high rental ; there 

 will be competitors who, wanting farms, may have 

 studied the real value of those offered, and every clause 

 of the covenants under which they are so offered; ex- 

 posed to the competition of others, who, like them- 

 selves, are seeking to settle in life, to invest their capi- 

 tal in that particular business to which alone they have 

 been bred, it is a race in which all run, with their eyes 

 open ; but the very eager, and, perhaps, the best men 

 will, for the time, have their understandings blinded. 

 They listen to the encouraging statements of the agent, 

 they become deaf to the less loud promptings of their 

 own prudence; seeing the risk of the offer they make, 

 but hoping against hope, they bid high that they may 

 not be outbid— they gain the prize. Now comes re- 

 flection. The lease is signed ; the lot has come home; 

 they cannot get rid of that which they deliberately 

 purchased ; it is not a chest of drawers or an unsound 

 horse, obtained at an auction in the market-place, but 

 a lar^e farm, taken on a twenty-one years' lease. I 

 say the occupier of such a farm may be a good farmer, 

 and what is called a good fellow ; I do not believe he 

 will be, in my sense of the word, a g<iod tenant. He is 

 the voluntary victim of a very hard bargain ; and I 

 say it is the duty of a landlord to abstain from this 

 system of letting." Never, certainly, have the abuses 

 of letting by tender been so ably summed up, or the 

 result of such a system more clearly shown, viz., that 

 landlord and tenant will come to care little or nothing 

 for each other beyond the actual terms of the hard 

 bargain. Let an estate and a good man have alike the 

 advantages of wholesome competition; but, however it 

 may answer in Scotland, there are many reasons why 

 letting by tender will never prevail in England. On 

 the subject of leases, agreements, and tenant-right 

 claims Lord Sidney touches more cautiously. Although 

 he allows that on the part of the landlord " there 

 should be no reserve as to the construction he puts 

 upon the terms on which he lets his land ; the real 

 mtaning of every clause, to its fullest extent, should 

 appear, so far as plain words can give it, and this 

 applies especially in the case of what are known as 

 ' compensation clauses.' " On the over-preservation of 

 game, however, he enters far more fully. In doing 

 this, let us remember that it is a country gentle- 

 man who is speaking, one with the rank of a noble- 

 man, and who has clearly alike a certain sympathy 

 with the tastes of those of his own order, and an inti- 

 mate acquaintance with the abuse he condemns : — 

 " Assuming this high preservation of game is of old 

 date, I am still not at all surprised that to the tenant- 

 farmers it is now a far greater source of complaint 

 than it used to be. They now, in farming, fight a 

 pitched battle with the corn-growers of all countries. 



Good farming is now a matter of very close calcula- 

 tion ; the loss of so many poles of this or that field's 

 produce, by the feeding of hares and rabbits, is a matter 

 plainly appreciable in the calculation of any given 

 year's probable return. Good farming is almost ganlen 

 farming, and it is easy to imagine the annoyance to the 

 eye, as well as to the pocket, which the ravages of these 

 animals in large numbers make on the farm. 

 It is my belief thaty by degrees, the preseyit 

 very liiijh preservation of (jame will diminish, 

 and at last cease altogether, wherever it 

 exists to the injury of highly-cultivated land. 

 I do not, however, expect, nor do I desire to see the 

 day, when landlords shall cease to take pleasure in the 

 sports of the Held. The right of ' chase' has ever 

 been the most jealously guarded privilege of the owner 

 of landed property. Tho value of land has ever been 

 much enhanced from the fact that it secures facility 

 for sporting purposes, thus atfording a great source of 

 amusement to the owner and his friends. Still it can- 

 not be denied that all reasonable indulgence in sporting 

 may be obtained on an estate at a far less positive cost 

 to the tenantry than is now but too often the case in 

 many counties. There is a limit at which the exaction 

 of a right borders on the perpetration of a wrong. As 

 to the duty of the landlord in the matter, it resolves 

 itself into this — Is he dealing as he would be dealt by, 

 if he systematically keeps uj) a large head of game so 

 close to a tenant's occupaticm as necessarily to inflict 

 much injury on that tenant, admitting that he has 

 the clear right to do so by the actual letter of the lease 

 under which the said tenant occupies ? I may be told 

 there is a compensation clause in the lease or agree- 

 ment, giving a right to claim payment for damage done. 

 I confess I regard such a clause, however just in 

 theory, to be one which in practice is rarely available 

 for the purpose for which it is ostensibly drawn. There 

 can be no doubt that the practice pursued on many 

 estates, of selling the game, has aggravated the irrita- 

 tion of the tenantry in the matter, whenever there has 

 been much damage done; with some truth they say 

 their farms cease to be move than mere pasture for bit ds 

 and animals which are to give their landlord and his 

 friends sport ; they are grazing fields for stock, much 

 of which they breed and feed, but he, for his own profit, 

 sends to market. I have never yet discussed this sub- 

 ject with any liberal-minded landlord who did not 

 allow the full weight of the evil this high preserving 

 jiroduces between tenants and the owners of land.'' 

 There is much more to this effect : while from all 

 sides we begin to hear that the very high preserva- 

 tion of game is diminishing, and that all liberal-minded 

 landlords admit the full weight of the evil. Lord 

 Sidney's comparison between true sport and artificial 

 excess is identical with the distinction drawn at the 

 Central Farmers' Club just a year since. But if 

 our readers would like something of another colour, 

 let them turn to the next page, and study the last of 

 Alderman Mechi's Farming Economics, wherein 

 elaborate instructions are given for feeding hares and 

 rabbits on swedes and mangels, for killing cats, and for 

 taming pheasants ! Of course the lecturer as a clergy- 

 man could not but see the harm this over-preservation 

 of game does to the labouring men — " like the gaudy 

 gin palace to the poor of towns, it is a lure to evil too 

 often entangling the steadiest, and from which the 

 young and adventurous seldom escape." So far his 

 audience went very heartily with their noble friend ; 

 but in considering the case of the working man, 

 and the duty of the landlord towards him, Lord 

 Sivlney insisted that the comfortable cottage 

 should be let direct from the one to the 

 other ; that is, that the farmer should have no control 



