232 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



for the purpose of investment, unless it be of long 

 duration? Nay, it is often urged against leases, 

 that under a good landlord farms pass from father 

 to son, and grandson, better without a lease than with 

 one : then why not as property at once ? Why keep 

 up the form and farce of ' ownership/ if its very ex- 

 cellence consist in a virtual surrender of its exercise^ 

 except to receive the 'dividends' half-yearly, under 

 the name of ' Rent/ and pay annually for the ' repair ' 

 of premises you never occupy ? 



Not that there are wanting many instances of im- 

 proving Tenants and liberal Landlords. Thank Hea- 

 ven, the worst laws are modified in practice by the 

 common sense of mankind, as well as the best evaded 

 by its ingenuity. It is the universal and unprofitable 

 substitution of ' tenancy ' for ownership, that is here 

 spoken of, the territorial mapping of the country 

 into dukeries and squiredoms, the impounding of the 

 soil out of the action of free investment, and the 

 compression of its inviting and unexplored capabilities 

 within the complicate trammels of a fiction, the 

 fiction of an Owner that does not occupy, and an 

 Occupier that does not own. 



Why should this be? Why should Law, the in- 

 stant it applies to Land, depart from its simplicity 



