RELATIONS BETWEEN LANDLORDS AND TENANTS 335 



Various methods were devised, in different parts of England, 

 for keeping the tenants from leaving the land in an exhausted 

 condition at the termination of their leases. It was the custom 

 on one estate in Shropshire to lease the land for twenty-one 

 years " certain," and for seven years more at the option of the 

 landlord. At the end of the twenty-one-year period, a new 

 contract of the same kind might be entered into, if terms could 

 be agreed upon, or the tenancy might be brought to a close, 

 but the important condition was that if the tenant had reduced 

 the land to a very low degree of fertility he could be forced to 

 keep the farm for seven years longer at the old rent. Even if 

 this system had succeeded in protecting the landlord, it failed 

 even to recognize the right of the tenant to unexhausted improve- 

 ments. 



The system which subsequent history has shown to be the most 

 effective means of keeping the farmers from exhausting the land 

 during the last few years of the tenancy, is that reported in the 

 " Yorkshire Survey." The system was that of granting remun- 

 eration to the retiring tenant for all his investments on which 

 time had not yet allowed him to realize their full returns ; the 

 tenant was then left free to farm as he pleased so long as he con- 

 formed to the rules of good husbandry. One of the examples 

 of this system is as follows : 



" The landlord covenants to allow the tenant, on quitting his farm, 

 what two indifferent persons shall deem reasonable, for what is 

 generally called full tillage and half tillage, being for the rent and 

 assessment of his fallow ground, the plowing and the management 

 of the same ; the lime, manure, or other tillage laid thereon ; the 

 seed sown thereupon ; the sowing and harrowing thereof ; also for 

 the sowing, harrowing, manuring, and managing any turnip fallow 

 which he may leave unsown ; also for any clover seed sown on the 

 premises ; and harrowing and rolling in of such seed ; and for every 

 other matter and thing done and performed in a husbandrylike 

 manner on such fallow lands, in the two last years of the term ; also 

 for the last year's manure left upon the premises ; and for any manure 

 and tillage laid upon the grass land." i 



1 "W. R. Yorkshire," p. 40. 



