802 THE CONDITION OF 



loss, and this liability of his has been the lever by which 

 unscrupulous landowners and unscrupulous agents have raised 

 rents, have appropriated the tenant's capital, and have brought 

 British agriculture into its present (1887) distressful condition. 

 Under the threat of the loss which eviction involves, a land- 

 owner can always gradually ruin his tenant, and many have 

 done so, not indeed without ultimate damage to themselves. 

 It may be safely alleged that no just landowner will ever use 

 the powers which the situation puts into his hand and the 

 law is accustomed to enforce, and late experience has proved 

 that no wise landowner will do what no just landowner would 

 do. It is no answer to say, as Norden said near three 

 centuries ago, that if tenants offer rents which they cannot be 

 expected to pay, landlords are not to blame for accepting the 

 offer. If a borrower offers a banker fifteen per cent, for a loan, 

 any sensible banker could find no better reason than the offer 

 for refusing the loan altogether. 



The other kind of rent is the famine rent, that is the price 

 which the owner of that which is a more or less exact mo- 

 nopoly is able to extract from the applicant whose existence 

 depends upon procuring a share of what the owner has to let. 

 We in England have no experience, or only a recent ex- 

 perience of famine rents, and this recent experience has come 

 upon us unawares. But famine rents have been normal for 

 nearly two centuries in Ireland, and for some time past in the 

 Scottish Highlands. Between beggary and occupancy there 

 has been no alternative to the Irish cottier and the Highland 

 crofter, and the landowner in these unhappy regions has used 

 powers which the situation gave him mercilessly and to the 

 full. I shall try, in the course of this chapter, to show that 

 during the seventeenth century something veiy like the Irish 

 system prevailed in England. Rent is the residual value 

 of agricultural and" some other products, after an average rate 

 of profit is obtained, risk is insured against, and labour is 

 adequately remunerated. In Ireland, as I have abundantly 

 seen, recently as well as twenty years ago, the process has 



