770 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



against him, any allowance to be made him, and the nett sum receivable, leaving a 

 blank for the sum received and another for the arrear left. 



47 11. Accounts current are required to be delivered in annually by the acting manager, 

 who ought generally to be the receiver. If the current receipts and disbursements are 

 numerous, as where extensive improvements are going on, and woods, mines, quarries, &c., 

 in hand, such accounts may be given in monthly, which will show the progress of the 

 several concerns, and simplify the business at the end of the year. 



4712. On the best managed estates it is usual, besides the books which have been 

 mentioned, to keep a ledger ; opening separate accounts for farm lands, woods, mines, 

 quarries, waters, houses and their appurtenances, public works, &c. : and where a pro- 

 prietor has several detached estates, besides such accounts being kept on each, one master 

 ledger contains accounts for the whole property. This, indeed, is nothing but an ob- 

 vious application of mercantile book-keeping to territorial property, the advantages of 

 which cannot but be as great in the one case as in the other. 



4713. In auditing estate accounts, the rent accounts are to be checked with the arrears 

 of the preceding year; the column of rents with the rent-roll, corrected up to the last 

 term of entry in order to comprise the fresh lettings ; and the columns of account vdth 

 the particulars, those of allowances being signed by the respective tenants. 



4714. The monthly accounts of receipts and disbursement s, as well as the annual pay- 

 ments, are to be compared with vouchers. The receipts are checked by deeds of sale, 

 contracts, and other written agreements, the awards of referees, or the estimates of sur- 

 veyors, the market prices of produce, &c. ; the receiver, in every case, identifying the 

 person from whom each sum was received. Each disbursement requires a direct and 

 sufficient voucher, endorsed and numbered, with a corresponding number affixed to the 

 charge in the account, so that they may be readily compared. 



4715. Tlie most essential part of the office of an auditor is that of entering into the 

 merits of each receipt and payment ; and considering whether the charges correspond 

 with the purposes for which they are made ; and whether the several sums received are 

 adequate to the respective matters disposed of; by these means detecting, and thence- 

 forward preventing, imposition and connivance. This, however, is an office which no 

 bne but a proprietor, or other person, who has been conversant with the transactions that 

 have taken place upon the estate, and who has a competent knowledge of rural concerns, 

 can properly perform. It may therefore be right to repeat, that if a proprietor has not yet 

 acquired a competent knowledge of his own territorial concerns, to form an adequate 

 judgment of the different entries in his manager's account, he should call in the assistance 

 of those who are conversant in rural affairs, to enable him to judge of any particular parts 

 that may seem to require it ; and should not set his hand to an account which he does 

 not clearly understand, nor authorise another to sign it, who may have less knowledge 

 than himself of its merits. 



BOOK V. 



SELECTION, HIRING, AND STOCKING OF FARMS. 



4716. Farms or lands let out to men who cultivate it as a business or profession exist in 

 all highly civilised countries. Sometimes the farmer or tenant pays to the proprietor or 

 landlord a proportion of the produce, determined yearly, or as the crops ripen ; and 

 sometimes he pays a fixed quantity of produce, or labour, or money, or part of each of 

 these. In Britain, where farming, as a profession, is carried to a higher degree of per- 

 fection than in any other country, the connection between landlord and tenant is regularly 

 defined by particular agreements and general laws ; and the latter, on entering on a farm, 

 engages to pay a fixed sum for its use for a certain number of years. This sum is fixed 

 according to the estimated value of the land ; but being fixed, and for a certain time, 

 it admits of no abatement in proportion to the quantity or value of the produce, as in the 

 proportional or metayer system general in most countries (265. and 596.); and hence 

 the necessity of a farmer maturely considering every circumstance connected with a farm 

 before he becomes its tenant. The subjects of consideration form the business of this 

 Book, and naturally divide themselves into such as relate to the farm, to the farmer, and 

 to the landlord. Some of the subjects, being treated of in the preceding Book, will be 

 but slightly noticed, though, as connected with the object of the present, they could not be 

 altogether omitted. 



