WALTER BLITH 113 



also Blith's work is significant of the era of the Civil War. He 

 himself beat his ploughshare into a sword, became a captain in the 

 Roundhead army, dedicated his second edition under the title of 

 The English Improver Improved (1652) " to the Right Honourable 

 the Lord Generall Cromwell," adorns it with a portrait of himself 

 arrayed in full military costume, and adds the legend ' Vive La Re 

 Publick: 



Among the remedies which Blith suggests for the defects of 

 English farming, he urges the employment of more capital ; 

 enclosures, with due regard to cottiers and labourers ; the abolition 

 of " slavish customs " ; the removal of water-mills ; the extinction 

 of " vermine " ; the recognition of tenant-right. It is an indica- 

 tion of agricultural progress that the question of tenants' improve- 

 ments should be thus forcing itself to the front. Sir Richard 

 Weston in his Discoura called attention to the Flemish custom, 

 unknown to him in England, of " taking a Farm upon Improvement" 

 In Flanders leases for twenty-one years were taken on condition 

 that " whatsoever four indifferent persons (whereof two to bee 

 chosen by the one, and two by the other) should judg the Farm to 

 bee improved at the end of his Leas, the Owner was to paie so much 

 in value to the Tenant for his improving it." In the Preface to his 

 Legacie, Hartlib had imitated Weston in urging the adoption of 

 this custom in England. Blith, who also quotes the Flemish lease 

 with approval, points out the injustice of the English law and the 

 hindrance to all improvements which it created. "If," he says, 

 " a Tenant be at never so great paines or cost for the improvement 

 of his Land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater Rack upon him- 

 self, or else invests his Land-Lord into his cost and labour gratia, 

 or at best lies at his Land-Lord's mercy for requitall ; which 

 occasions a neglect of all good Husbandry. . . . Now this I 

 humble conceive may be removed, if there were a Law Inacted, by 

 which every Land-Lord should be obliged, either to give him 

 reasonable allowance for his clear Improvement, or ejse suffer him 

 or his to enjoy it so much longer as till he hath had a proportionable 

 requitall." The question had not yet become acute ; but, with 

 the insecurity of tenure which then prevailed, it was not surprising 

 that tenant-farmers were averse to improvements. Their experi- 

 ence was embodied in the proverbial saying current in Berkshire : 



" He that havocs may sit 

 He that improves must flit," 



a 



