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 £\o a year, and given up by the 

 tenant as too dear, being made worth £z^o 

 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, 



