700 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



fanner. If the price of produce shall continue to rise as it has done, till very lately, for 

 the last forty years, no improvements which a tenant can be expected to execute will 

 compensate tlie landlord's loss ; and if, on the other hand, prices shall decline, the capital 

 of most tenants must be exhausted in a few years, and the lands will necessarily revert to 

 the proprietor, as has been the case of late in many instances. Hence a landholder, in 

 agreeing to a long lease, can hardly ever assure himself, that the obligations on the part 

 of the tenant will be fully discharged throughout its whole term, while the obligations he 

 incurs himself may always be easily enforced. He runs the risk of great loss from a de- 

 preciation of money, but can look forward to very little benefit from a depreciation of 

 produce, except for a few years at most. Of this advantage a generous man would sel- 

 dom avail himself; and, indeed, in most instances, the advantage must be only imaginary, 

 for it would be overbalanced by the deterioration of his property." (Sup. Encyc. Brit. 

 art. Agr.) 



4325. There are various objections made to leases of nineteen or twenty-one years. Some 

 of these are of a feudal and aristocratical nature; such as the independence it gives the 

 tenants who may become purse-proud and saucy under the nose of their landlord, &c. 

 A greater objection has arisen from the depreciation of British currency during the last 

 ten years of the eighteenth, and first ten of the nineteenth centuries. Various schemes 

 have been suggested to counteract this evil ; but the whole of them are liable to objections, 

 and it may be safely stated, that it admits of no remedy, but the generous interference of 

 the landlord. 



SuBSECT. 4. Of the Rent and Covenants of a Lease. 



4326. To avert the evils of fxed money rents, and long leases, both to landlords and 

 tenants, the best mode known at present is the old plan of corn rents. This plan was 

 first revived in 1811, by a pamphlet published in Cupar, which attracted considerable 

 attention, and has led to the adoption in various parts of Scotland, of a mixed mode of 

 paying rents, partly in corn or the price of corn, and partly in money. In hilly districts, 

 instead of corn, wool, or the price of wool for an average of years, is sometimes fixed on. 

 We shall quote from the same intellig^'nt writer, on the duration of leases, his sentiments 

 on corn rents, and subjoin his observations on covenants. 



4327. Though the most equitable ^mode of determining the rent of lands on lease) would 

 be to make it rise and fall with the price of corn ; yet, " a rent paid in corn is liable to 

 serious objections, and can seldom be advisable in a commercial country. It necessarily 

 bears hardest on a tenant when he is least able to discharge it. In very bad seasons, his 

 crop may be so scanty, as scarcely to return seed and the expenses of cultivation, and the 

 share which he ought to receive himself, as the profits of his capital, as well as the quan- 

 tity allotted to the landlord, may not exist at all. Though, in this case, if he pays a 

 money rent, his loss may be considerable, it may be twice or three times greater if the rent 

 is to be paid in corn, or according to the high price of such seasons. In less favorable 

 years, which often occur in the variable climate of Britain, a corn rent would, in numer- 

 ous instances, absorb neai'ly the whole free or disposable produce, as it is by no means un- 

 common to find the gross produce of even good land reduced from twenty to fifty per 

 cent, below an average, in particular seasons. And it ought to be considered, in regard 

 to the landlord himself, that his income would thus be doubled or trebled, at a time when 

 all other classes were suflPering from scarcity and consequent dearth ; while, in times of 

 plenty and cheapness, he might find it diflScult to make his expenses correspond with the 

 great diminution of his receipts. It is of much importance to both parties, that the 

 amount of the rent should vary as little as possible irom any unforeseen causes, though 

 tenants in general would be perhaps the most injured by such fluctuations. 



4328. To obviate these and other objections to a corn rent, and to do equal justice at all 

 times to both landlord and tenant, a plan has been lately suggefcted for converting the corn 

 into money, adopting for its price, not the price of the year for which the rent is payable, 

 but the average price of a certain number of years. The rent, according to this plan, may 

 be calculated every year, by omitting the first year of the series, and adding a new one ; 

 or, it may continue the same for a certain number of years, and then be fixed according to 

 a new average. Let us suppose the lease to be for twenty-one years, the average agreed 

 on being seven years, and the first year's rent, that is, the price of so many quarters of 

 corn, will be calculated from the average price of the crop of that year, and of the six: 

 years preceding. If it be meant to take a new average for the second and every succeed- 

 ing year's rent, all that is necessary is, to strike oflT the first of these seven years, adding 

 the year for which the rent is payable, and so on during all the years of the lease. But 

 this labor, slight as it is, may be dispensed with, by continuing the rent without variation 

 for the first seven years of the lease according to the average price of the seven years im- 

 m;^diately preceding its commencement, and, at the end of this period, fixing a new rent, 

 according to the avierage price of the seven years just expired, to continue for the next 

 seven years. Thus, in the course of twenty-one years, the rent would be calculated only 



