RELATIONS BETWEEN LANDLORDS AND TENANTS 33! 



enhance the value of the land, except obliging the farmer to 

 leave a proportional quantity of such land in grass at the 

 expiration of the lease, and specifying the manner in which that 

 land is to be sown down. Other clauses serve only to distress the 

 farmer, but will never promote the interests of the land-lord." 1 



The agricultural writers of the time were by no means all in 

 full agreement with Robert Brown in his views on the subject 

 of leases. Leases seem to have been in best repute in the eastern 

 counties, where they were usually for a term of twenty-one years. 

 Mr. Bailey is quoted as saying, in criticism of Mr. Brown's 

 position as stated above, that, " if the proprietors of land were 

 sure of always getting tenants that would act properly there 

 would be no need of restricting covenants; but this is not 

 always the case, and there are many instances of estates being 

 much injured by exhausting crops where tenants were not 

 properly restricted. That many covenants are useless or 

 hurtful I readily admit ; but covenants may be so framed, that a 

 tenant shall have ample liberty to take such crops as he shall 

 think proper, and to propose such modes as shall benefit himself 

 without injuring his landlord." 2 



It was quite generally agreed that long leases, properly drawn, 

 were extremely desirable from the standpoint of the farmer, 

 wherever improvements were to be made. But the landlords 

 were not so generally of the opinion that long-term leases 

 were a good thing. Many landlords claimed that it made the 

 tenants too independent. 3 But a more important objection was 

 found in the fact that while a lease of sufficient length would 

 enable the tenant to make improvements, it was hard to arrange 

 matters so that the tenants would not exhaust the land at the 

 end of the tenancy. It often happened that a tenant would 

 bring the land into good tilth and to a high degree of fertility 

 during the early years of his tenancy, and then take as nearly 

 everything out of it as possible during the last few years of 

 the lease. 



* "Agricultural Survey, W. R. Yorkshire," pp. 42-44. 2 Ibid., p. 5- 



* "Staffordshire Survey," p. 30; "Leicestershire Survey," pp. 51-52; "North- 

 amptonshire Survey," p. 45. 



