CHAPTER VIII. 



LEASES AND YEARLY TENANCY. 



FARM LEASES are no doubt necessary in order to define the nature of 

 the arrangements entered into between landlord and tenant, as without 

 such documents matters would certainly ere long come to be misunder- 

 stood ; but in these days of intelligence and progressive improvement, 

 to tie an intelligent man down in a lease to cultivate his farm accord- 

 in<r to a certain strictly-defined mode and course of rotation in the 

 cropping, seems highly injudicious, and is, without doubt, injurious to 

 both parties. Among a poor and ignorant class of tenants it may be, 

 and indeed is, necessary to lay clown certain rules to guide them in 

 the cultivation of their farms, as without such they would be likely 

 to exhaust them from constant cropping without the application of 

 manures ; but with a class of well-to-do tenants, who have even mode- 

 rate education and skill, the case is very different, for they must and do 

 understand it to be for their own interests to keep their lands in the 

 best bearing condition possible. I have before me, while I write this 

 chapter, the regulations and conditions on which the farms are let on 

 a number of estates, and which are embodied in the leases, some of the 

 restrictive clauses in which I shall here quote : " The tenant is neither 

 to outlabour nor mislabour the farm ; in particular, he is, on no pre- 

 tence whatever, to take two white or corn crops in succession. The 

 course of cropping to be pursued shall be the five years' rotation, as 

 follows viz., The ground broken up from grass shall be cropped the 

 first year with wheat, barley, or oats ; the second year it shall be fal- 

 lowed or cropped with drilled green crop, being first properly cleaned 

 and dunged, which green crop shall consist of at least four-fifths of 

 turnips ; the third year the land shall be cropped with wheat, barley, 

 or oats, along with which shall be sown a sufficient quantity of ryegrass 

 and clover seeds, but where wheat is taken after grass it shall not be 

 allowed after fallow or green crop, as no more than one wheat crop shall 

 be permitted in the course of the rotation; and the fourth and fifth years 

 the land shall be in grass." 



