ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 151 



culls, both cattle and sheep ; wool and hides, old carts and 

 old iron implements; any old and diseased slave ; and any- 

 thing else which he can spare. A proprietor should be 

 seeking to sell rather than to buy." 



Cato would have been invaluable as master of an Union 

 workhouse. 



The next phase of occupation was called " Politic." The 

 politor or partuarius was a resident working partner, bring- 

 ing no capital into the concern, but receiving, as his remu- 

 neration, a stipulated share of the produce. His proportion 

 of grain varied from one-ninth in the best land, to one-fifth 

 in the most sterile. An elaborate calculation leads to the 

 conclusion that, on an arable farm of 125 acres, a politor 

 would receive from 30 to 35 qrs. of various kinds of grain 

 as his share ; but the information does not seem to be of 

 much value, as we are ignorant what privileges of mainte- 

 nance, for himself or his family, he received from the pro- 

 duce of the farm. It is difficult to ascertain the exact terms 

 of partnership ; but it appears that the course of husbandry 

 to be pursued was prescribed by them. 



" Liberi Coloni" i. e. farmers paying rent and cultivating 

 wholly on their own account first appear in the pages of 

 Columella;* and in a passage too long to extract, he dis- 

 cusses the pros and cons of this mode of occupation. He 

 comes to this general conclusion, that a farm never produces 

 so much as when it is occupied by the proprietor: that even 

 under a bailiff, unless he is very rapacious (arid taking 

 that word as his text, he enumerates the various modes in 

 which a bailiff can cheat), it will produce more than under 

 the hands of a tenant ; but that if it be of that sort on 

 which a tenant cannot commit very great waste, is distant, 

 and not easily accessible to the owner, in that case it had 

 better be let. His rules for the management of tenants 

 are so applicable to all times, that we cannot curtail them, 



* Cato uses the word Colonus, but it is evident from the context that 

 he indicated thereby not a tenant farmer, but a yeoman resident on his 

 own land. 



