36 
from any land, or the proportion of the produce 
or of its value to which the landlord has an 
equitable title, is a question of great intricacy, 
and involves a vast number of variable and some- 
times conflicting elements. Many attempts were 
made, in the times of the old routine husbandry, 
to reduce it to a standard and uniform rate; but 
even then they differed so widely in result, that 
some writers held one-fifth of the produce of 
arable land to be a fair amount for rent, while 
others contended for so much as one-third ; and 
now they are made twenty-fold more conflicting, 
and rendered all but totally impracticable, by the 
great improvements which have been achieved 
by means of draining, irrigation, superior imple- 
ments, agricultural chemistry, comprehensive ro- 
tations, and general enlightenment in all the 
principles of both economics and science which 
control the interests and practices of farming, 
Two farms, naturally possessing the same cha- 
racters of soil and the same advantages of situa- 
tion, may be in such widely different artificial 
conditions, that the one would be cheap at double 
the rent of the other; and two farmers, who 
have enjoyed the same routine advantages of 
mechanical training, or who might be pronounced 
equally good practical men, may differ so widely 
in the knowledge and control of the nice powers 
of improvement resulting from modern discovery, 
and from scientific calculation, that the one 
could well afford to pay a very high rent for any 
piece of good land, while the other might hold it 
at a moderate or even low rent, and nevertheless 
be a loser. Yet the equitable rent is clearly 
leviable from only the land itself, or from such 
attributes of it either natural or artificial as it 
possesses at the time of being let, and cannot, in 
any degree, be due from the results of either the 
superior intelligence, the superior industry, or 
the special improvements of the tenant. The 
simple surplus produce of land, in the state and 
under the conditions of its being let—or the pro- 
fit which remains after the payment of all costs, 
and after a fair allowance for the risk and inter- 
est of capital and for the time and labour of the 
farmer—this alone is rent; and, when seen in 
such naked simplicity, it almost looks a more 
subtle and undeterminable thing than when 
complicated with all the general principles of 
economy and farming; for the very total pro- 
duce of farms, whether as to annual amount or 
as to average value, is so very fluctuating as to 
keep the whole frame-work of society in continual 
vibration,—and therefore the surplus produce, 
which at one time may be no surplus at all and 
at another may be an overflowing one, and which 
at all times varies so mightily with local and 
peculiar circumstances, is surpassingly difficult 
to be forecast or precalculated, so as to be fixed 
beforehand in the form of rent, Yet approxima- 
tions can be made; and these, to the utter ex- 
clusion of precedents, examples, and arbitrary 
rules, ought to guide both landlord and tenant. 
RENT. 
“In Scotland,” says Sir John Sinclair, “the 
following table of rent on arable farms states 
what is considered to be a fair proportion, where 
the land is cultivated :-— 
Per English Acre. 
1, Where land produces £10 10s. per 
acre per annum, one-third, or .£3 10 6 
2. Where land produces £6 12s. ree 
acre, one-fourth, or 113 6 
3. Where land produces only £45 bs. per 
acre, one-fifth, or O17 6 
In regard to grazing farms, they are let on prin- 
ciples totally different from the arable, namely, 
according to the quantity of stock they can 
maintain; and as they are not liable to the same 
expense of management, both the landlord and 
the tenant receive larger shares of the produce, 
than in the case of arable farms. In England, 
on the other hand, the husbandmen and their 
landlords are in a kind of partnership, in which 
the tenant provides all the capital, and under- 
takes the management of the whole concern; as 
a remuneration for which, and for the interest 
of the money he has invested in it, he is al- 
lowed, on arable land, equal to what is considered 
to be one moiety of the surplus, after defraying 
the expenses of cultivation, the taxes to which 
he is liable for the farm he occupies, and every 
other outgoing. Hay land requires much less of 
his attention, and for this he only obtains one- 
third of the surplus. But the profits of grazing, 
depending much on superior judgment in buying 
and selling stock, as well as skill in preventing 
or curing their diseases, the grazier is entitled to 
a share of the surplus fully equal to that of his 
landlord. It has been contended, as a general 
principle, that as both the expense of cultivating 
land, and the value of its produce, are infinitely 
various, a farmer ought to calculate what profit 
he can make on his whole farm, without enter- 
ing into details; it being of little consequence 
to him, whether he pays at the rate of £10 or 
10s. per acre, provided he makes an adequate in- 
terest on the capital invested. That is certainly 
a fair criterion on which a tenant may calculate 
what he ought to offer; but a landlord, in esti- 
mating the rent he ought to insist on, must take 
into his consideration the produce that his land 
is capable of yielding, and what proportion of it, 
or of its value, at a fair average, he has reason 
to expect, under all the circumstances of the 
case, which ought not entirely to depend on the 
exertions of a timid or penurious tenant. What 
are the profits to which a farmer is entitled, is a 
subject of much dispute. On the one hand it is 
contended, that the produce of land is of such 
universal and absolute necessity to the existence | 
of mankind, that it is not reasonable it should 
yield to him who raises it more than a fair pro- 
fit. On the other hand it is urged, that a far- 
mer is entitled to be fully recompensed for the 
application of a considerable capital, exposed to 
the uncertainty of the seasons, when it is man- 
aged with economy and conducted with industry 
