Tlie Making of the Land in England. 
373 
The gross sum expended on the property betweec 1825 and 
1885 inclusive came to 67,438Z. on new farm-houses, buildings, 
cottages, general repairs, and draining, though only 1867/. is 
accounted for under this last head. As the cost of the pur- 
chased land, including law and other expenses, comes to about 
42,500/., there appears thus to have been a grand total of 
110,000/. spent on a property which produced in 1885 a net 
rent of only 4600/. 
The interest on 110,000/. at 4 per cent, is 4400/., showing 
that within the last sixty years Earl Bathurst and his predeces- 
sors have practically bought and paid for their own agricultural 
property in hard cash. In other words, if they had not laid 
out a shilling in repairs on these agricultural holdings during 
the last sixty years, and had not purchased additional agricul- 
tural property for the improvement of their estate, but had 
invested the money so laid out at 4 per cent., the present owner 
would have been able to let the original agricultural estate of 
4920 acres at one shilling an acre last year, and would be now 
actually in receipt of a larger return than he is possessed of 
under present circumstances. 
It will be possibly urged that the cases quoted are exceptional, 
and not fair illustrations of the argument of the writer. Those 
who advance this objection w^ould do well to bear in mind the 
length of time which has been occupied in bringing this fair 
realm into the condition in which we now find it ; how impossible 
have been the operations without legislation ; how slow and costlv 
legislative processes are ; how system after system has been 
abandoned and resumed under the influences of wars, treaties, 
and commercial changes ; how sometimes the ignorant obstinacy 
of the wealthy or the popular prejudices of the masses have 
impeded or suspended remunerative operations ; how sometime, 
violence has been used to put an end to the efforts of the 
improvers ; and how the laws of real property, with their costly 
complications and the heavy demands of the exchequer, have 
closed the markets to those who might desire to realize on their 
improvements. 
Let them bear in mind that the owner and cultivator of 
the soil has a fickle partner, from whom he can never divorce 
himself, in the person of Nature. Her whims and wavs 
are beyond calculation. Mistress of such mighty agents as 
droughts, floods, frost and heat, she too often makes a disastrous 
end of the best devised schemes for improvement. You can 
impose no restraint on her. You cannot command the tem- 
perature of a county as you would that of a cucumber-frame or a 
factory ; you cannot carry the sun in one hand and a watering- 
pot in the other. The most a prudent improver can do is to 
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