100 THE EFFECTS OF 



CHAP. XX. 



less necessary, because in a work lately issued from 

 the Cambridge university press more facts are 

 collected on the subject of rent than are to be 

 found in any other work, accompanied with the 

 most judicious observations on the advantages and 

 disadvantages of the different modes by which it 

 is extracted l . 



The cultivators in this country, at the period 

 we are considering, were under contracts with 

 the proprietors of the soil to pay certain small 

 annual money payments. Those payments were 

 fixed at the commencement of the term for 

 which the leases were granted, the greater part 

 of which were for ninety-nine years, but deter- 

 minable after the death of three lives. A fine 

 was almost universally paid on the granting the 

 lease, and as each life dropped a fine was paid for 

 a renewal. 



It seems almost certain that the fine as well as 

 the annual, or, as it was commonly called, " the 

 lord's rent," was fixed with reference to the rate 

 of prices which the produce bore at the commence- 

 ment of the term. The first term when a renewal 

 would become necessary, on the death of the first 

 of the three lives, would be about thirty-three 

 years. A fine would then be demandable for a new 



1 See An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the 

 Sources of Taxation Part 1st, Rent by the Rev. Richard 

 Jones, M. A, of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. 



