206 RENT AND PEOFITS ON THE GENESEE. 



upon shares, the cultivator paying one-half of the clear 

 23roduce, with such details as the parties may arrange. 

 As In New Brunswick, this system Is more popular than 

 that of a fixed, and especially a money rent. 



I had subsequently an opportunity of meeting Mr 

 Wadsworth, one of the largest landowners in the State, 

 possessing a large tract of the wheat-land in the Genesee 

 Valley. This gentleman himself farms 1000 acres, and 

 clears from 3 to 7J per cent on the whole capital 

 employed. Including the market value of the land, and 

 of the buildings and stock upon It. For a gentleman 

 farmer, this would be a very fair return ; but It Is scarcely 

 enough In a country where land gives no political and 

 little social Influence, and where, by lending his money, 

 and doing nothing, a man can obtain 7 per cent certain. 



Mr Wadsworth informed me that the system of rent- 

 ing farms is not unpopular In his district ; that his farms 

 used to be let nominally on shares, but in reality at a 

 fixed grain rent. The produce was estimated at 18 

 bushels of wheat an acre, and he took one-third, or 6 

 bushels, as the rent. Latterly he has been taking 8 

 bushels, and the farmers pay it readily. The rotation he 

 prescribes is wheat followed by two years clover, cut for 

 hay or eaten off the first year, and eaten off or ploughed 

 in the second. For the wheat land he takes 6 or 8 

 bushels of grain of the best quality, delivered In kind at 

 a warehouse on the canal, where it is always sure of an 

 immediate and ready market ; * for the clover land he 

 takes a money-rent of two or three dollars an acre, as 

 may be fixed by inspection of an agent, every year. 



* This is the old Scotch system of corn rents without the averages, 

 which the easy sale of wheat in this locality renders unnecessaiy. 

 Nothing seems fairer for all parties, more siiited to a proper rotation of 

 crops, or less likely to be affected injuriously either for landlord or 

 tenant by changes in corn laws, than that which is still followed where 

 old leases are unexpired. Thus on the Hamilton estate, within 6 miles 

 of Glasgow, a farm of 150 Scottish acres, the lease- of which is just 



