LEASES 283 



acquiesced in by the tenant because of easy rents. In spite 

 of this insecurity of tenure and the absence of Agricultural 

 Holdings Acts, the tenants invested their capital largely with 

 no other security than the landlord's character, * for in no 

 country of the world does the character of any class of men 

 stand so high for fair and generous dealing as that of the 

 great body of the English landlords.' 



The custom of tenant-right was unknown except in certain 

 counties, Surrey, Sussex, the Weald of Kent, Lincoln, North 

 Notts, and in part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.^ Where 

 it existed, the agriculture was on the whole inferior to that of 

 the districts where it did not, and it had frequently led to 

 fraud in a greater or less degree. Many farmers were in the 

 practice of * working up to a quitting ', or making a profit by 

 the difference which their ingenuity and that of their valuer 

 enabled them to demand at leaving as compared with what 

 they paid on entry. The best farmers as well as the landlords 

 were said to be disgusted with the system. The dislike for 

 leases in the days immediately before the repeal of the Corn 

 Laws was partly due to the uncertainty how long protection 

 would last ; but chiefly then, as afterwards, to the fact that if 

 a man improved his farm under a lease he had nearly always 

 to pay an increased rent on renewal, but if he held from year 

 to year his improvement, if any, was so gradual and imper- 

 ceptible that it was hardly noticed and the rent was not 

 raised. It may also be attributable to the modern disinclina- 

 tion to be bound down to a particular spot for a long period. 

 At all events, the general dislike of farmers for leases is 

 a curious commentary on the assertions of those writers who 

 said that leases were his chief necessity. 



The disparity of the labourer's wages in 1850 was most 



remarkable, ranging from 15^'. a week in parts of Lancashire 



to 6s. in South Wilts, the average of the northern counties 



being iij-. 6d., and of the southern 8.f. 5^. a difference due 



^ Caird, op. cit., p. 507. 



