366 Tlie Making of the Land in England. 
the useless life of the fashionable bantling, leaving a legacy of 
debt and a heavy charge inevitable for renewals. m 
The expenditure on such enterprises must not be forgotten hjM 
those who would record the cost of the subjugation of the English^ 
soil. It may be contended that money thus thrown away should.^ 
not be taken into account. Be it so : but the experience derived ■ 
from such mistakes, as an asset, has its value — a very sterling one ■ 
— and something on its account must be credited in estimating " 
the capital expenditure which goes to make up the value at 
the present day of ordinary farm lands. It is not the building 
of the vessels and the pay of the crews only that make up the 
cost of navigating our coasts : it is increased by a charge for 
beacons, buoys, and lights, warning the sailors of the hidden 
rocks and shoals on which so many have gone to destruction. 
The renewals of fences, where they have been neglected, is a 
constant source of expense, since (even where tenderly cared for) 
whitethorn and blackthorn and hazel are not immortal. The 
perpetual clearing out and deepening of outfalls, the renewals 
and repairs of fen and marsh banks and dykes, the maintenance 
of the machinery, without which it would be flooded, are con- 
tinuous and costly, coming on some of the inferior levels to 
an annual cost of from 45. to Qs. an acre. 
Finally, it should be noted that it is upon land which in a 
state of nature was of an inferior value, either from its situa- 
tion or poverty, that we meet with the marked instances of 
an appreciation of value due, as we have seen, to the lavish 
expenditure of extraneous capital. Fen districts, sandy heaths, 
vitriolic gravels, sullen clays, stony wildernesses, furnish the 
standard examples of improved rentals and reduced incomes. 
Arthur Young described one of his improved occupations in 
Middlesex as the " maw of a devouring wolf," the very reverse 
of the character an inexperienced observer would have bestowed 
on it. 
One of the most successful and wealthiest men of'business 
in the Midland counties, a very considerable landowner, whose 
family for a century back have been signally connected with 
the advancement of agriculture, told the writer forty years 
ago that " he could not afford to buy land at less than 90/. 
to lOOZ. per acre " — meaning, it may be presumed, that an 
income might be calculated on with certainty when the ele- 
ments of fertility are in natural abundance and convertible 
into human food (as in the best grazing lands) without ex- 
penditure upon houses, cottages, and buildings ; while in the 
other case, though the saleable products might be as con- 
siderable or even more so, the income they yielded was too 
seriously diminished by the cost of the artificial means 
