240 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



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 excellence 

 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 

 improving Tenants and liberal Landlords. Thank 

 Heaven, 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 im- 

 pounding of the soil out of the action of free in- 

 vestment, and the compression of its inviting and 

 unexplored capabilities within the complicate tram- 

 mels 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 

 instant it applies to Land, depart from its simplicity 

 and even-handedness by making land, alone of all 

 other forms of property and capital (that fall under 



