CONDITION OF THE TENANT-FARMER, 1583-1702. 8oi 



Dissolution, so extensively indeed, that much of the interest 

 which the Crown had in this vast confiscation was a deferred 

 or reversionary one. These tenancies were constantly of 

 numerous parcels, held for terms, the date of the lease 

 being various, so that a tenant was constantly at the end 

 of the term for which one parcel of land was granted, and 

 at the beginning of the term of another parcel. He was 

 therefore fairly secure of his holding, though his rent might 

 be raised on him at the close of each term, and on each 

 close, ploughland, yardland, or meadow as it reverted to the 

 lessor. 



Rent may be of two kinds : An economic rent, strictly 

 so defined, in which the tenant-farmer, having theoretically 

 entire discretion in adopting and continuing his calling, 

 and absolute facility for transferring his tenure from one 

 holding to another without appreciable loss, procures the 

 mean rate of profit which other industrial avocations are 

 reputed to have, in the following of which capital and skill are 

 fluid and mobile, and can therefore be employed with no 

 more risk in one direction than another. This is the theory 

 of profit held by economists of the speculative school, who 

 having derived their illustrations mainly from the modern 

 money market, have written about agricultural and manu- 

 facturing capital as though it could be manipulated with 

 almost as much ease as a balance at a banker's or an invest- 

 ment in consols can be. But it is almost superfluous to say 

 that such an economic rent has never been in existence. It 

 is true that the freedom of a tenant in the first occupancy of 

 agricultural land is apparently perfect. I say apparently, for 

 there may and generally does exist an urgent demand for the 

 material on which to exercise capital and skill, especially if 

 the industry be the only one possible, and therefore the 

 discretion in making a contract for occupancy is or has 

 been generally curtailed. But immediately on the tenant 

 entering into possession his freedom is at an end. He 

 cannot extricate himself from his holding without serious 



VOL. V. 3 F 



