332 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



Another objection to the granting of leases for long terms 

 became quite general between 1790 and 1815. The landlords 

 objected that as a result of rising prices during the period covered 

 by the leases, they sustained great losses. It was maintained 

 by the landlords of Surrey, for example, that by letting land for 

 a term of fourteen or twenty-one years or any longer period, 

 the owners of the land actually received, " almost every year 

 during the currency of the lease, and certainly in the latter years 

 of it, a less rent than he did at the commencement, from the 

 depreciation in the value of money." l And for this reason the 

 landlords were objecting to the granting of leases. Even in the 

 county of Norfolk, where the twenty-one-year lease had proved 

 so beneficial, the landlords objected to long leases because it so 

 often happened that soon after a farm was rented the prices 

 of agricultural produce would rise so much higher than when 

 the lease was taken, that the tenants were " under-rented " 

 for a series of years. 2 The basis for complaint on this ground is 

 shown by the fact that the average price of wheat was about 

 twice as high for the five years from 1809 to 1813 as for the 

 five years from 1790 to I794. 3 



A statement of the tenant problem and the solution proposed 

 by an eminent rural economist of the time will be interesting in 

 this connection. In his work on " Landed Estates," published 

 in 1806, William Marshall reviews the existing forms of land 

 tenure, 4 " the tenant holding at will "; " holding from year 

 to year, under a written agreement, with specified covenants " ; 

 " leases for a term of years, as seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or 

 greater number of years " ; and says : 



" Objections are urged against each of these species of tenancy. The 

 depreciation of the circulating value of money, and the consequent 

 nominal rise, in the rental value of lands, has rendered long leases 

 greatly disadvantageous to proprietors: while annual holdings are 

 not only discouraging to tenants ; especially to men of exertion 

 and capital but are a bar to the improvement, and a clog on the 



1 W. Stevenson, "Agriculture of Surrey," p. 98. 



Marshall, "Rural Economy of Norfolk," Vol. I, p. 67. 



1 Prothero, " English Agriculture," Appendix I. * Pp. 37 8 to 382. 



