38 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



improvement of the farm, because they may sometimes expect to 

 recover it, with a large profit, before the expiration of the lease. 



The proprietors of land were anciently the legislators of every 

 part of Europe. The laws relating to land, therefore, were all calcu- 

 lated for what they supposed the interest of the proprietor. It was 

 for his interest, they had imagined, that no lease granted by any of 

 his predecessors should hinder him from enjoying, during a long term 

 of years, the full value of his land. Avarice and injustice are always 

 shortsighted, and they did not see how much this regulation must 

 obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt, in the long run, the real 

 interest of the landlord. 



The farmers, too, besides paying the rent, were bound to perform 

 a great number of services to the landlord; and public services to 

 which the yeomanry were bound were not less arbitrary than the pri- 

 vate ones. To make and maintain the highroads, a service which 

 still exists, I believe, everywhere, though with different degrees of 

 oppression in different countries, was not the only one. When the 

 king's troops, when his household, or his officers of any kind passed 

 through any part of the country, the yeomanry were bound to provide 

 them with horses, carriages, and provisions, at a price regulated by 

 the purveyor. The public taxes, to which they were subject, were as 

 irregular and oppressive as the services. 



Under all these discouragements, little improvement could be 

 expected from the occupiers of land. The ancient policy of Europe 

 was, over and above all this, unfavourable to the improvement and 

 cultivation of land, whether carried on by the proprietor or by the 

 farmer; first, by the general prohibition of the exportation of corn, 

 without a special license, which seems to have been a very universal 

 regulation; and, secondly, by the restraints that were laid upon the 

 inland commerce, not only of corn, but of almost every other part of 

 the produce of the farm, by the absurd laws against engrossers, fore- 

 stallers, and regraters, and by the privileges of fairs and markets. 



8. MANORIAL HUSBANDRY* 

 BY ROWLAND E. PROTHERO 



The most primitive form of agriculture in England was that 

 known as "wild field-grass" husbandry. Joint occupation and joint 

 tillage were probably its characteristics. Fresh tracts of grass were 



1 Adapted from English Farming, Past and Present, pp. 2, 3, 8-18, 26. (Copy- 

 right by Longmans, Green, & Co., London. Used by permission of the publisher.) 



