380 History of the English Landed Interest. 



these retired tradespeople " new fashioned farmers," who, 

 " succeeding so ill in their undertakings, and being governed 

 by books," bring the latter into bad repute amongst those 

 genuine husbandmen whose practice would be all the better 

 for a little theoretical knowledge. The system of paying the 

 estate steward out of the profits from agreements and leases 

 not only held out an incentive to him to let the holdings at 

 as high a rent as possible, but to select that kind of tenant 

 who would be likely to require replacing in as short a time 

 as possible. An individual who has to look for his liveli- 

 hood out of the profits on leases, deeds of distress, surrenders, 

 and the fees of entry, and who, at the same time, can 

 gratify his purblind emplo3''er by showing him an increased 

 rent roll, has every inducement to mismanage the estate in 

 this direction. " At length," says Marshall, " when the lands 

 are completely exhausted, the buildings let down, the gates 

 and fences broken and destroyed, the water courses choked 

 up, and the roads impassable, the tenant runs off, and the farm 

 lies unoccupied, a very blank in the rent roll ! " " For the life- 

 tenant of an estate whose age is advanced a temporary increase 

 of the rent roll might be advantageous, but for any owner at 

 all interested in the welfare of the remainder-man, such an 

 improvident practice," urges this same writer, " becomes 

 altogether irrational," and here, perhaps, is one of the main 

 arguments in favour of hereditary property. 



It will by now be evident that everything connected with 

 the letting of farms militated against good husbandry. The 

 farmer who wanted a holding ought to have had double the 

 capital required for merely stocking it, or the bulk of his spare 

 cash would have been absorbed in pa^'ing the fines and that 

 large item which, under the head of " good-will," was de- 

 manded by the off-going tenant as a right. In some waj^s, of 

 course, this sj^stem of good-will neutralised the bad effects of no 

 compensation being allowed by the landlord for unexhausted 

 improvements. The off-going tenant was more or less en- 

 couraged to continue a s^^stem of good husbandry to the last, 

 in the hope of receiving an equivalent from his successor, under 

 the head of emblements ; but it was not fair for the in-comer 



