124 
Land Drdinafie and Improvement 
cliarire tlioin for a cortain nuinbcv of ^rars with tlio rost of 
(Unable improvements, tliougli the owners creating- the charj^e 
mij^ht not live to see the borrowed money repaid. 
In that Act the period fixed for the repayment of the principal 
money was not less than eight years nor more than eighteen 
years, and the care with which the Legislature protected the 
reversionary interests will be apparent from the provisions which 
the Act contained, and which have been adopted in subse- 
quent Acts, to the effect that if the instalments were not paid up, 
the land upon change of possession should not be liable to more 
than half-a-year's arrear of instalment. 
2. Between the years 1840 and 1844, the public advocacy of 
under-drainage by the late Mr. Smith of Dcanston, and the 
valuable Essays of Mr. Josiah Parkes, in the ' Journal ' of this 
Society, having served to popularise under-drainage as a funda- 
mental branch of agriculture, the attention of the landed interest 
was drawn to the necessity of further facilitating the application 
of borrowed money to drainage and other durable land improve- 
ments, and of charging the improved lands with the repayment. 
The first effort made to apply collective capital to the improve- 
ment of landed property was that made in the year 1843, by the 
Yorkshire Land Drainage Company, of which Mr. J. H. Char- 
nock, of Wakefield, was the originator, and in which the late 
Lord Carlisle, Lord Zetland, Mr. Godfrey Wentworth, Mr. Henry 
Briggs, Mr. Hammerton, and Messrs. Bradley of Richmond, in 
Yorkshire, with the late Mr. James Smith of Deanston and the 
present writer, took active interest as Directors. This Company, 
however, did not succeed in establisliing itself, owing to the diffi- 
culties started by mortgagees and other claimants having interest 
in entailed estates, which it was the object of the Company to 
improve, but it did great service in originating a Bill for the 
exteasion of legislative powers, which Mr. Pusey in the session 
of 1844 undertook to c(mduct through the House of Commons. 
This Bill was intended to secure a more direct and less 
costly means of proceeding than that laid down by the Act 
of the 3 & 4 Vict., and to obtain for drainage loans priority 
over existing mortgages, on the ground that as no loan for that 
purpose could be legally sanctioned, unless it could be satisfac- 
torily shown that the return from the improvement would exceed 
in annual value the rent-charge by which the cost would be 
re{)aid. the security of existing mortgages was enhanced and not 
diminished. 
It is very pleasing to trace the great interest taken in this 
important question by the late Mr. Pusey, to whom agriculturists, 
and this Society especially, owe so much. On the 7th of 
