VALUE OF LAND. 129 



possessed of good skill and of fair capital for his subject simply 

 because he knows how to turn his money to good account in the 

 working of his land and in dealing with his live stock. So long, 

 however, as there are farmers of the old school in the occupancy of 

 land, they will continue to complain of high rents, simply because they 

 are too confirmed in their old prejudices in regard to farming to admit 

 of their easily throwing them aside and taking up new modes of action. 

 The cry about too high rents does not now prevail nearly so much as it 

 did among farmers, the younger, the more intelligent, and the moneyed 

 part of them setting such examples as shut the mouths of those who 

 would still call out ; for they are, generally speaking, obliged to confess 

 that there is more truth in the principles of the new school than they 

 were at first willing to believe. Facts in all cases speak for themselves, 

 and a first-rate crop, grown on a farm previously considered unfit for 

 this, is not a thing to be hidden from any one living in its neighbour- 

 hood. A man of capital and skill takes a farm in a district in which 

 he has many old-fashioned neighbours ; he sets to work, and drains 

 and manures his land on a more extended scale than is adopted by 

 them, and the results of his new modes of dealing with his land are 

 soon visible in the crops he grows, and the larger numbers, as well as 

 the superior character, of the live stock he maintains on his farm. This 

 improved state of things is not to be denied, and the neighbouring 

 farmers begin to have faith in modern agriculture ; and now one tries 

 it, and then another, and all who do try are benefited by their 

 attempts of course in degree according to the extent of the work per- 

 formed. In this way one or two good farmers in a neighbourhood soon 

 banish grumblers from it, as they are shown in the most plain and 

 practical way that their complaints are groundless, and that the fault is 

 their own if they cannot make their subjects pay as well as the other 

 does ; and so they gradually complain less and farm better. 



Having made the foregoing explanatory remarks in regard to my 

 views on the subject, I now come to give a direct answer to the 

 question standing at the head of the chapter, and it is this : Taking 

 the qualifications and abilities of many inferior farmers into account, 

 their subjects may be said to be too high rented for them; but judging 

 all farms I have examined by the capabilities of the laud, I do not 

 know of any one which can be said to be too high rented, as, in the 

 worst paying cases of farming that have ever come under my notice, the 

 fault could not be attributed so much to the land as to the want of 

 ability in the tenants to deal profitably with it. 



