TENANT FARMERS IN UNITED STATES PRIOR TO 1880 247 



"When I called the family were from home, but in a few hours 

 Colonel Wadsworth, the younger son, visited me, in a most open and 

 kind manner pressingly invited me to take up my residence at his 

 father's house, an invitation which I accepted. 



"I found the elder Mr. Wadsworth the very beau ideal of a fine 

 old English country gentleman : tall and graceful in person, and in 

 manners courteous, affable, and hospitable. 



"Mr. Wadsworth's property comprises about forty miles of coun- 

 try, the richness and picturesque appearance of which it is impossible 

 in adequate terms to describe. Of this property Colonel Wadsworth 

 occupies 1600 acres, 1000 of which, in the Genesee flats, are alluvial 

 meadow land equal to any in the vales of Aylesbury and Buckingham. 



"Mr. Wadsworth has a numerous tenantry, but under a tenure 

 which can yield neither profit to the landlord nor benefit to them- 

 selves ; they have no leases, but plow and sow from year to year, 

 the landlord receiving for rent a portion of the produce in kind. 

 His portion is ascertained on the field after the crop is reaped, and 

 is delivered by the tenants at an appointed barn where it is instantly 

 threshed out and the straw given to the winds. Such a system must 

 be a bar to every improvement ; it in fact operates as a prohibition 

 of all exertion and expenditure by the tenant for increasing the 

 fertility of his farm, it being unreasonable to expect that any tenant 

 will use exertions or lay out capital, where the landlord is to reap, 

 certainly a large share of the benefit thence accruing, and from the 

 precariousness of the tenure perhaps the whole. Mr. Wadsworth 

 therefore may go on to draw his share of the pittance of grain which 

 his tenants may under present circumstances be able or disposed to 

 raise, but he must lay his account that in these circumstances nothing 

 can be done by them to improve the soil and render it duly pro- 

 ductive. . . . 



"Now, although Mr. Wadsworth is an acute well-informed man 

 who must have seen well and far before him, having at an early 

 period made an extensive purchase of land at a price greatly under 

 the value to which time and circumstances have raised it, yet it 

 appears to me he is much wedded to old customs, otherwise he would 

 at once perceive the advantage of dividing his estate into farms of a 

 proper size, erecting on them suitable buildings, and granting leases 

 for such a term of years as would insure to the tenants a return for 

 money expended on improvements. By similar means and by es- 

 tablishing and stipulating for judicious modes of culture, the value of 



