LANDLORDS AND TENANTS 



tenants were "under-rented" for a series of years. 1 

 The basis for complaint on this ground is shown 

 by the fact that the average price of wheat was 

 about twice as high for the five years from 1809 

 to 1813 as for the five years from 1790 to I794. 2 

 A statement of the tenant problem and the solu- 

 tion proposed by an eminent rural economist of 

 the time will be interesting in this connection. 

 In his work on Landed Estates, published in 1806, 

 William Marshall reviews the existing forms of 

 land tenure. 3 "The tenant holding at will"; 

 "holding from year to year, under a written agree- 

 ment, with specified covenants"; "leases for a 

 term of years, as seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or 

 greater number of years" ; and says : 



Objections are urged against each of these species of 

 tenancy. The depreciation of the circulating value of 

 money, and the consequent nominal rise, in the rental value 

 of lands, has rendered long leases greatly disadvantageous 

 to proprietors : while annual holdings are not only discour- 

 aging to tenants ; especially to men of exertion and capital 

 but are a bar to the improvement, and a clog on the pros- 

 perity of an estate: beside being, in the first instance, un- 

 friendly to the interests of proprietors; inasmuch as they 

 lower the fair rental values of their lands. 



Some years ago, on perceiving the antipathy which had 

 gone forth among men of fortune, against granting leases 

 for long terms, and being well aware of the disadvantages 

 of annual holdings, it occurred to me that agreements for 

 occupying from three years to three years, instead of from 

 year to year, would be an eligible species of tenancy :- 



1 Marshall, Rural Economy of Norfolk, Vol. I, p. 67. 



2 Prothero, English Agriculture, Appendix I. 

 a Pp. 378 to 382. 



