22 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture 



With the seventeenth century we have 

 great improvements effected by the land- 

 lords in drainage. To take an example : 

 A proprietor named Rowland Vaughan 

 published an account of the drainage 

 operations he carried out on his estate in 

 Herefordshire in 1610, under a curious and 

 lengthy title, beginning with a reference 

 to his most approved and long experienced 

 waterworks, and ending with a phrase 

 showing that the waterworks would in- 

 crease the fertility of certain lands by ten 

 for one. And he gives an example of 

 certain of his own lands which had been 

 let at ^"40 a year, and given up by the 

 tenant as too dear, being made worth ^"300 

 a year by these new methods of draining. 

 At the same time, the profit to be made 

 by improving land led the moneyed men 

 of the cities to purchase land, e.g., this 

 Vaughan ; and as Adam Smith points out, 



