252 
On the Rent and Produce of Land, 
[Aug. 
hood, to take half the produce of the land as rent, in all ordinary cases; and 
that he has known as far as three- fifths having been taken on a good crop. 
I am well aware that the former proportion, and even mote, is very commonly 
the nominal share of the produce expected and bargained for by the landlord. 
As far as my experience goes, I have never witnessed the actual realization of 
such a proportion during a course of even a few years, without extensive injury 
following the exaction, in the shape of extreme distress to the collectors, and 
consequent deterioration of the estate. Such nominal demand is usually 
frustrated by the raiats stealing (it is hardly fair to apply so odious a term 
though) from the crop, when in a standing state, or when stacked in the “ callian ,” 
or threshing floor. The universality of this mode of avoiding a ruinous demand, 
has caused it to pass into a proverb. In cases where the landlord is powerful, and 
looks keenly after his (supposed) interest, and where he manages either entirely or 
greatly to stop this practice, I have generally seen the following effects : either 
the raiats, pressed by distress, desert the estate, and flee to where they can procure a 
sufficiency of food, or advances are continually made to them by the landlord for 
their maintenance, in order to avoid such an emigration. It is a very usual circum- 
stance to find such landlords produce long and large outstanding accounts against 
their raiats, which of course cannot he pleaded. Neither, indeed, is such often 
attempted, save either from motives of enmity or revenge against particular raiats, 
or at the expiration of the landlord's own lease from Government, when it becomes, 
perhaps, a matter of indifference to him whether the raiats desert or not; or when, 
perhaps, it may be an object to him to make them do so, in order to obtain the 
next lease from Government on lower terms. — These are general remarks, and 
I do not mean to deny the success to partial exceptions, which local circumstances 
may induce. But I am convinced that the prosperity of both landlord and tenant 
would be best advanced by the limitation of the rent to one-third of the produce — 
that is, that rent should not exceed that proportion. 
In Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Agriculture, I think, it is stated, (I have not the 
book, and am not very confident of the correctness of my memory,) that in the 
southern parts of Scotland, the agriculture of which is, perhaps, unrivalled through- 
out the w'orld, it is considered that the proportion of produce taken as rent, should 
never exceed one-third ; and that more than one-fourth should not be taken, unless 
the gross produce per acre amount in value to £10. The contrast presented by 
the northern and southern provinces of France has been often observed. In the 
northern, fixed money rents on leases prevail : the state of agriculture is flou- 
rishing, and the condition of the peasantry comfortable. In the southern, and also 
in many districts of Italy, the system usually adopted, is the payment of half the 
produce as rent. The name of a farm, “ Metairie,” is derived from the practice. 
The condition of the peasantry, and the state of agriculture are well known to 
be any thing but flourishing in those parts. Yet there , it is part of the contract for 
the landlords to furnish seed and the instruments of husbandry, (I rather think also 
both dwellings and bullocks, but am not certain.) This of course greatly reduces 
the actual amount of the rent from the nominal standard of one half. In this 
coiintry it is expected that the raiat find seed, <?cc. for himself. That this 
ultimately and universally falls on the landlord, however, I have above re- 
marked. 
If the above are facts, which I believe them to be, 1 see no reason for supposing 
that what is destructive to the welfare of the peasantry, and injurious to the agri- 
culture of other countries, should not also be so to this : or rather, I see no reason 
why we should not at once assume as the chief cause of the bad state of agricul- 
ture, and of the depressed condition of the raiats in this country, the universal- 
ly too high rates of rent. 
I beg to assure your correspondent an Indigo Planter, in reply to a remark 
of his, in your May number, that I wished to restrict the data and notices furnished 
bjr me to the part of the country of which I wrote. That vast differences must 
exist in the various parts of so immense a country as India, is sufficiently obvi - 
ous. To have included, however, the value of the double crops would have pro- 
duced a scarcely sensible variation in the average value of the produce of land. 
For the value of the secondary crop (always meaning in that part of the country 
of which I write) is exceedingly trifling, and seldom yields the landlord more than 
or 3 annas per big a. The quantity of land so cultivated is also very small. 
As an average on the whole district, I think a* of the whole cultivated land of 
tnese few estates in which double crops are raised, would be too high an assunap- 
won. uut again, it is very questionable whether any increased value is realized 
