266 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



exercise, except to receive the "dividends" half- 

 yearly, under the name of " Rent," and pay annually 

 for the " repair of premises you never occupy ? * 



"Not that there are wanting many instances of 

 improving Tenants and liberal Landlords. Thank 

 Heaven, the worst laws are modified in practice by 

 the common sense of mankind, as well as the best 

 evaded, by its ingenuity. It is the enormous and 

 unnecessary substitution of " tenancy" for ownership 

 that is here spoken of the territorial mapping of 

 the country into dukeries and squiredoms, the 

 impounding of the soil out of the action of free 

 investment, and compression of its redundant and 

 unexplored capabilities within the complicate tram- 

 mels of a fiction the fiction of an owner that 

 does not occupy, and an occupier that does not own. 



Why should this be? Why should law, the in- 

 stant it applies to Land, depart from its simplicity 

 and even-hand edness by making land, alone of all 

 other forms of property and capital, (that fall under 

 its occasional operation by intestacy or disputed 

 right,) an exception to the general rule of fair and 



* We would commend our author to the twelve year lease 

 law of the state of New York, as the extent of the letting of 

 agricultural land. A wise and a salutary law it is. Er 



