GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 313 



shared between landlord and tenant, and in 

 consequence of this landlords are still drawing 

 rents which, in many cases, are largely paid out 

 of tenants' capital, and which, in most cases, absorb 

 practically the whole profits which farmers might 

 otherwise obtain, and deprive them even of the 

 most modest return from their capital invested in 

 farming. 



(12.) These inferences, from the accounts supplied, are 

 more than confirmed by the mass of evidence — 

 substantially unchallenged — to the effect that 

 excessive rents have brought, and are bringing, vast 

 numbers of farmers to ruin, that rents have been 

 insufficiently and too tardily reduced, and that the 

 soil has been steadily deteriorated by the ruin and 

 impoverishment of tenants, owing to the dispro- 

 portionate share of the diminishing receipts which 

 has had to be taken for rents. 



(13.) The ruinous results of rack-renting in all parts 

 of the country have demonstrated that competition 

 cannot safely be taken as the measure of 

 agricultural rent, which should rather be based on 

 a valuation of the average money returns obtain- 

 able from the land, a principle recognised on some 

 of the most wisely and generously managed 

 estates. 



(14.) The large sums of money expended in the 

 purchase and improvement of estates are not a 

 sufficient justification for high rents, for the reason 

 that to charge anything like interest on the 

 original capital value would be to transfer the 

 whole economic loss to the tenant ; and, as to 

 landlords' improvements, the tenants have, in fact, 

 paid for them, and are still paying for them in the 

 reduced rents, while much of the outlay of land- 

 lords cannot be treated as in any sense an in- 

 terest-bearing investment. 



(15.) While the bad farmer, who reduces the value of his 

 farm, is able to make easier terms for a renewal 

 of his tenancy, the improving farmer who invests 



