THE TENANT-FARMER, 1583-1702. - 803 



been inverted, and rent has been made all the value of 

 the product, beyond the bare existence of the cottier. 



To enforce contracts is undoubtedly the first duty of 

 society and law. But the duty is conditioned by an obli- 

 gation which is frequently lost sight of by interested partisans. 

 The State is not only justified in determining, but bound to 

 determine, what contracts it will enforce ; and if it decides to 

 enforce, to what extent it will enforce. Some contracts 

 it declares to be immoral and contrary to public policy. 

 These it not only declines to enforce, but not infrequently 

 punishes those who presume on attempting to complete such 

 contracts. Others it repudiates or modifies, as complete 

 or partial duress is employed by one of the parties against 

 the other. But a famine rent is rent extorted under duress, 

 as is also a rent exalted by the threat of eviction, when 

 the certain loss of the occupier is apparent to him, and of 

 course not a whit less known to the owner or the agent. 

 It is justice on the part of the State to protect a tenant 

 against so one-sided a contract, and it is in accordance with 

 public policy that the State should interpret contracts for 

 the use of land equitably. 



Now the complaint that the landowner was using powers 

 which the law gave or permitted him, or did not notice 

 that he was exercising, to exact a famine rent, is heard 

 very early in English agricultural history. I have been 

 able (vol. iv. p. 94) to cite Fitzherbert in the beginning of the 

 sixteenth century as a witness to the dangers which sur- 

 rounded agriculture in that age from the landlord's avarice 

 and the tenant's uncertainty; and the famous passage in 

 Latimer's sermon, in which he compares the tenancy which 

 his father held with that which his father's successor in the 

 same estate held, is cogent evidence for the practice which 

 Fitzherbert condemns a generation before Latimer. 



There is a succession of witnesses from the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century, which testifies to the injury which the 

 rapacity of landowners put on the tenant, and through him on 



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