54 Rents , Wages, and Profits in Agriculture 



and asserts that useless offices were pro- 

 vided for them in the Court or the army. 

 But on the other side, the more enterprising 

 would enter into the professions and also 

 into trade, and later on this spirit of enter- 

 prise and alliance of land with trade had 

 much to do with the expansion of the 

 English colonies. Another result, however, 

 was that the landowners, now being 

 dependent on rent and not on the profits 

 of agriculture made by themselves, began 

 to consider their own economic interests 

 too closely, and at the end of the fifteenth 

 century we have complaints of the exactions 

 of the landlords and other abuses, especially 

 in connection with the enclosures. 



1 have dealt at some length with the land 

 and stock lease and its consequences, partly 

 because it was of great historical importance, 

 being indeed the main instrument in a great 

 social revolution, but also because it has 



