1864. | Agriculture. 99 
and tenant, gave tho fullest acquiescence to the principle of repaying 
the tenant for his outlay ; but at the same time the completest refusal 
to the principle, far more influential for good, of granting leases to his 
tenants for terms of years. On the one hand, he said :— 
“T should feel it to be dishonest if I allowed any tenant of mine 
to leave me in debt to him. If a man put on to a farm that which 
would improve it, I should feel bound not to let that man leave my 
estate without being remunerated for what is unexhausted.” 
On the other hand, he also said :— 
“TJ adhere to what I have always said respecting leases, namely, 
that nothing will induce me to give a man a lease, because in the first 
place a lease is all on one side. The landlord remains, but the tenant, 
if he be inclined to be fraudulent, may go. I boldly and honestly state 
that I will never surrender my property to a tenant. I mean that no 
man who will allow his sons to poach and act disgracefully shall have 
control over my land for a number of years.” 
With whatever cordiality we may admire the evident honesty in 
every sense which these remarks display, it is also evident that they 
are dictated by an erroneous judgment, not only of the interest of 
landowners, but of the general character of tenantry. 
The lease is not “all on one side.” It not only confers advan- 
tages on the tenant, but it secures the annual payment of the sum at 
which those advantages have been valued by the landlord. The land- 
lord does not ‘“remain:” his successor may be either himself in a 
different mood of mind, or the inheritor of his estate; and in either 
case it is within his power to put an end to an unwritten bargain. 
Again, a landlord does not “surrender his property to a tenant” 
under the lease, so much as the tenant is asked to surrender his pro- 
perty to the landlord under tenancy at will. Unlike the tenant’s share 
in the improvements he confers upon the land he occupies, the land 
remains. Baron Liebig indeed speaks of the exhaustion of the land, 
but no such thing is known in practice. The “worn-out” farm of 
the practical man would be readily taken again by another tenant at the 
former rent, if only it were let to him for a year or two for nothing. 
‘Two years’ rent, 3/. or 4/. per annum, are thus probably the utmost 
injury ordinary land receives by cross-cropping and hard usage. And 
if land be let on lease, you must suppose its tenant to be not only 
fraudulent but a fool, to do even this amount of injury to it. The 
fear which a landlord expresses lest his property should be injured 
by letting it out of his hands for so long a time is thus altogether 
visionary. The tenant’s capital is to a great extent the cause of, and it 
is the security for, its fertility. That system which most encourages 
the outlay of this capital is best in the interest of the landlord as well 
as in that of the tenant and consumer. 
And the fear of having an ill-conditioned set of neighbours 
permanently collected round you by granting leases, is equally 
visionary. It has been proved in other walks of life that the plan of 
universal restriction—of treating all men with suspicion—of making 
your general arrangements hinge on the possibility of every man being 
a rogue, isa blunder. It is an especial mistake in Agriculture. For 
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