152 AGRICULTURE. 



and we give them in Dickson's tolerably faithful, though 

 very clumsy translation : 



" A landlord ought to treat his tenant with gentleness, 

 should show himself not difficult to please, and be more 

 rigorous in exacting culture than rent ; because this is less 

 severe, and upon the whole more advantageous ; for when 

 land is carefully cultivated, it for the most part brings pro- 

 fit, never loss, except when assaulted by a storm or pillagers ; 

 and therefore the farmer cannot have the assurance to ask 

 any ease of his rent. Neither should the landlord be very 

 tenacious of his right in everything to which the tenant is 

 bound, particularly as to days of payment .... On the 

 other hand, the landlord ought not to be entirely negligent 

 in this matter, for it is certainly true, as Alpheus the usurer 

 used to say, that good debts become bad ones by being not 

 called for. I remember to have heard it asserted by Lucius 

 Volusius, an old rich man, who had been consul, that that 

 estate was most advantageous to the landlord, which was 

 cultivated by farmers born upon the land ; for these are 

 attached to it by a strong habit from their cradles. So 

 indeed it is my opinion, that the frequent letting of a farm 

 is a bad thing ; however, it is still worse to let one to a 

 farmer who lives in town, and chooses rather to cultivate it 

 by servants than by himself. Saserna used to say, that 

 from such a farm a lawsuit was got in place of rent." 



The younger Pliny, in a letter to Calvisius Rufus, dis- 

 cusses the desirableness of purchasing an estate which had 

 been offered to him. He states that it was very much worn 

 out, and was consequently offered to him at a much lower 

 price than that for which it had previously been sold ; that 

 it would be necessary to displace the tenants, who were 

 without capital, and had been repeatedly distrained and 

 sold up ; and that the investment would pay him 4 per 

 cent., the usual interest on loans being at that period 6 per 

 cent. The standard agricultural sentence about bad times, 

 " communi temporis iniquitate," occurs in Pliny's letter. 

 We grumble by prescriptive right. Pliny, the ever self- 



