15 



the average price, according to the returns for the current 

 year, being the last payment ; but the rent never to exceed 

 684, whatever the average price of the grain for the year 

 may amount to that is the maximum. Perhaps 500 or 

 550 a-year might be agreed upon as the minimum. 



The fiars prices above mentioned are thus ascertained. 

 In February of every year the Sheriff of the county sum- 

 mons a competent number of persons living within the 

 sheriffdom, who have knowledge and experience of the 

 price and trade of victual in their bounds, and from them 

 he chooses fifteen men, whereof not fewer than eight 

 must be proprietors. These meet in the beginning of 

 March, and strike an average of the prices of the different 

 kinds of grain, the produce of the county for the preced- 

 ing crop proceeding upon the evidence of seven wit- 

 nesses of the prices received by them for grain sold in the 

 months of November, December, January, and February. 

 These averages are called the fiars prices of the county, 

 and are accounted the legal prices when the prices have 

 not been determined otherwise by covenant. 



The mode in which a money-rent is converted into a 

 corn-rent is thus. By the Corn Law of 1815, the remu- 

 nerating price for wheat was admitted to be 80s. per quar- 

 ter, and the import duty fixed so as to secure that price 

 as it was expected to the grower, in order to enable him 

 to pay the rents then exacted. This law was found not 

 to work well, and in 1828 it was repealed and another 

 act passed, wherein the remunerating price was under- 

 stood to be not less than 62s. per quarter for wheat, 33s. 

 for barley, and 25s. for oats ; or 120s. for the triple 

 quarter of wheat, barley, and oats. As may be readily 

 imagined, valuations were made by surveyors, and farms 

 taken by tenants upon the principles laid down in each 

 of these acts ; but the price of corn still continuing to 

 drop, notwithstanding these prohibitory duties, rents were 

 soon found to be too high. In order to meet this state of 

 affairs, nothing was left but to give relief to the tenant, 

 by making rents correspond or fluctuate with the price of 



