tenancy,—and still greater to extensive and en- 
terprizing farmers who take lands upon leases 
of from ten to fourteen, and especially of from 
nineteen to thirty years. The natural rent of 
land for a single season can be calculated with a 
probability of sufficient accuracy to justify the 
offer and acceptance of a fixed sum; but the 
covenanted rent, for so long a period as that of 
almost any good leases, cannot be calculated, on 
the principle of a fixed sum, except in the way 
of the most obscure conjecture or of bold, reck- 
less, and exceedingly dangerous speculation. The 
fluctuations and reverses which the agriculture 
of Britain has undergone, even in periods of the 
least disturbed progress of legislation and com- 
merce, but especially at times of revulsion and 
upheaval in national politics and in international 
connexions, have repeatedly tossed all the ar- 
rangements of the country which were based on 
fixed rents into a state of chaos, and involved 
the pecuniary condition of a large proportion of 
the agricultural community in inextricable con- 
fusion or in utter ruin. In one state of things, 
the landlord or the tenant acquires an excessive 
gain, which leads to prodigality ; in the opposite 
state of things, he suffers an excessive loss, which 
may prove destruction; and in either state, the 
harmony of interests and the consequent well- 
being of general society are disturbed or over- 
thrown. In many of the best farmed districts 
of Britain, therefore—particularly in the north 
of England and the Lowlands of Scotland, where 
the long-lease system prevails—the adoption of 
a fluctuating rent, instead of a fixed one, has 
become pretty general and is much approved. 
The chief argument in favour of a fixed rent 
in all cases, and against a fluctuating one in any, 
is that, however ill a covenanted fixed rent may 
be adapted to the times, or however widely it may 
occasionally differ from the natural or equitable 
rent, yet, in consequence of being a known and 
exact amount, it both checks and regulates the 
expenditure of the tenant and sets certain bounds 
to the expectations of the landlord. “ Now as 
to the tenant, it appears to us that he is better 
enabled to regulate his expenditure by knowing 
the quantity, or nearly so, of his produce, say 
the number of stacks of wheat, which he must 
lay aside as rent, than by knowing the sum of 
money when he is yet ignorant what proportion 
that sum will bear to the gross return from his 
farm. As regards the proprietor, again, we 
conceive that the virtual value of his income is 
fully as steady when made up of produce-rents 
as money-rents. This results from the fact that 
the staple products of the country, such as corn, 
butcher-meat, and wool, are the chief regulators 
of the value of money. Thus, if the proprietor’s 
income be regulated by these, or even by the 
most important of them, he may calculate on 
being able always to obtain out of it pretty 
nearly the same quantities of the necessaries and 
even of the luxuries of life. But even if it were 
RENT. 
some advantage in ordinary cases for both par- 
ties to know the amount of money in place of 
produce which they have to give and receive, 
such knowledge can be of little consolation to 
the tenant when that money becomes double of 
what he would give, or to the proprietor when 
it is only half of what he would get, were a new 
bargain to be made. That such cases have often 
happened with farms let on fixed money-rents, 
during the last half century, no one in the least 
acquainted with the history of British agricul- 
ture will deny. There appears, therefore, to be 
no such advantage in a constant rent over a 
fluctuating one, from the mere fixedness of the 
one over the variableness of the other, as to make 
us prefer the former, if the latter can be better 
proportioned to the means of paying it.” 
A fluctuating rent, however—in order to its 
maintaining a near approximation to a natural 
rent, or in order that it may not involve irregu- 
larities and disadvantages nearly as great as 
those of a fixed rent—must either be understood 
with considerable limitations, or calculated with 
express reference to particular farms or districts, 
or determined by very comprehensive principles. 
“he amount of rent for improvable and well- 
cultivated farms,’ remarks Sir John Sinelair, 
“does not depend so much on the price of grain, 
as is commonly imagined. A large proportion 
of such farms usually produce green crops, the 
value of which depends upon the prices of beef, 
mutton, and wool, and not on that of grain. 
Various circumstances also may arise, which may 
reduce the price of particular sorts of grain below 
its usual level (for example, barley, when the 
distilleries are stopped); or may raise it dispro- 
portionably much higher, in case a large propor- 
tion of the wheat crop should be destroyed by 
rust or mildew.” In consequence, too, of de- 
pressed prices commonly proceeding from an 
abundant harvest, and exalted prices from a de- 
ficient one, a fluctuating rent determinable sim- 
ply by the current price of corn might be lowest 
when the farmer has most to give and highest 
when he has least, so that the landlord might 
suffer in years of plentiful produce and low 
prices, and the tenant in years of scanty produce 
and high prices, and the interests of the two be 
made to work against each other to the eventual 
and serious injury of both. 
One contrivance for checking the irregularities 
of the system is to make only one half of the to- 
tal rent fluctuating, and to make the other half 
fixed ; and this has been found pretty satisfactory 
for both tenant and landlord in most cases where 
a considerable portion of the total produce arises 
from green crops, grass, and live stock.—Another 
contrivance is to determine the total fluctuating 
rent of each year by the average of prices during 
the preceding seven years; and this, of course, 
prevents any disarrangement from any one great 
and sudden rise or fall in the market, but, at the 
same time, is no check whatever upon an agegre- 
