52 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture 



required on the farm, and very often they 

 could afford time to take additional employ- 

 ment at the high wages that prevailed. 

 There were cases, no doubt (some are re- 

 corded by Rogers in detail), in which the 

 rent fell into arrears, and we find examples 

 of arrears being written off, and sometimes 

 the landlord's share in the risk, especially 

 as regards sheep, more than balanced the 

 rent ; but on the average, both parties 

 gained. 



Another difficulty of the landlord arose 

 from the legal idea of rent. A farmer 

 often took land even from the same land- 

 lord in different plots for different periods. 

 This would be natural, from the original 

 scattered nature of the holdings ; but the 

 legal idea was that each particular plot of 

 land must be responsible for the rent 

 which issued out of it, and accordingly, 

 arrears of rent sometimes accumulated 



