IMPKOVEM?:NT OF LAND. 107 



have to explain that the statements given are merely meant to show in 

 a general way the advantages of the improvements suggested, as they 

 would affect the income from and market value of an estate. It would, 

 indeed, be a very heavy task for a proprietor to trench all the lands of 

 his estate for his tenants : although I am of opinion that it might be his 

 best policy to do so, still the immediate outlay would be so great that 

 but few proprietors could well afford to undertake it, even looking at 

 the high interest which would be obtained from the outlay. In order, 

 therefore, that proprietors may have their estates improved in the way 

 suggested, and at the least possible outlay to themselves, I would 

 recommend that they should engage with wealthy tenants only, who 

 could undertake the trenching of the land on their own account, as it 

 would be so much to their own interest. A very fair engagement be- 

 tween landlord and tenant, in carrying out the improvements suggested, 

 would be, that the proprietor performed all drainage-works necessary, 

 and also erect all necessary buildings, and charge the tenants interest 

 on the cost as additional rent ; arid that, on the other hand, the tenants, 

 in their leases, be taken bound to trench and manure the whole of their 

 land in the way and in the order of rotation described, all to the satis- 

 faction of the proprietor or his agent. By such an arrangement the 

 expense of the improvements would be borne nearly equally by pro- 

 prietor and tenant; while the former would have the interest on his 

 money laid out returned in the shape of an increased yearly rental, and 

 the latter would secure an ample interest on his outlay from the greater 

 yield of crops of all kinds his land so treated would produce him. Then, 

 in order to insure a farmer's being able to carry out agriculture on the 

 principle suggested, he would require to be possessed,on entering his farm, 

 of a sum at least equal to 15 or 20 on each acre of the land embraced 

 on it. I am aware that this sum per acre will to many seem extrava- 

 gantly high, as indeed it is high compared with the capital usually 

 brought by farmers to bear upon their business; but it is not higher than 

 is really needed to carry out farming as profitably as men are found to 

 conduct other businesses. The trenching of the laud involves a consid- 

 erable expenditure of itself ; but this is not all, for it involves also a 

 much larger expense in manures than is needed under the present sys- 

 tem of dealing with the land. The deep-manuring recommended to be 

 applied to the land, both while it is being trenched and when it is put 

 in crop in the spring afterwards, would take up all the farmyard dung 

 available during the first two or three years gf the lease, and so it would 

 be necessary to purchase large quantities of other manures to apply to 

 the surface above it, as without this double manuring the full advan- 

 tages of the improvement could not be obtained. The trenching and 



