458 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



increase in some proportion to the augmentation of rent, so, 

 however, as not to affect the revenue, which is the reward of im- 

 provements ; but some portion of that general advance of rents, 

 which is the result of the general progress of the country, ought 

 to be laid under contribution. 



All this applies with equal force to the British Isles, but sub- 

 ject to some important restrictions, because, in the first place, 

 English and Irish landlords do not put on the screw of a con- 

 tinual increase of rent with anything like the harshness habitual 

 with Belgian landowners. In the second place, the local rates in 

 England are high, and are rising progressively. Thirdly, rents 

 have been raised in England much less in proportion than they 

 are in Belgium. 



Nevertheless, as regards the increase of rent, the land system 

 of Belgium is not so bad as that of England. In both countries 

 part of the clear profit of civilisation is sublimated, so to speak, 

 and deposited in the shape of increased rent in the landlord's 

 exchequer, even though he be an absentee or a do-nothing. But 

 where there are a great many landowners a large proportion of 

 its inhabitants must come in for a share in the increased rent. 

 If, on the contrary, they are few in number, they monopolise 

 the whole of the social benefit. In the former case the working 

 of the economic law of increasing rent will be harsher than in 

 the latter ; yet it will be acquiesced in when many benefit by it, 

 while it must sooner or later arouse opposition where it tends to 

 enrich a few families only. The system of rack-renting, which is 

 so much censured in England, is generally practised in Flanders ; 

 nevertheless, the tenant bears with it in all meekness, notwith- 

 standing the sufferings it entails on him. In the United King- 

 dom the landlord would scruple to shear his tenants as they 

 are shorn in Flanders, yet he does not escape reproach ; and 

 this is easily explained by the fact that for one landowner in 

 England there are a hundred in Flanders. Still, on the whole, 

 the system of tenure of land in Flanders is anything but worthy 

 of imitation. There are too many tenant-farmers and too few 

 peasant-proprietors ; the leases are excessively short and the 

 rents excessively high. 



