A Short History of English AgricultureCurtler, W. H. R. (William Henry Ricketts)
History
A Short History of English Agriculture
Curtler, W. H. R. (William Henry Ricketts)
Agriculture -- England -- History
to growers to remember that hops have always been subject to great
fluctuations in price; between 1693 and 1700, for instance, they
varied from 40s. to 240s. a cwt., so that they may yet see them at a
remunerative figure. 'Upon the whole', says an eighteenth-century
writer, 'though many have acquired large estates by hops, their real
advantage is perhaps questionable. By engrossing the attention of the
farmer they withdraw him from slower and more certain sources of
wealth, and encourage him to rely too much upon chance for his rent,
rather than the honest labour of the plough. To the landlord the
cultivation of hops is an evil, defrauding the arable land of its
proper quantity of manure and thereby impoverishing his estate.'
It was by this time the general opinion of men with a thorough
experience of farming, that in many parts of Great Britain no
sufficient compensation was secured to the tenant for his unexhausted
improvements. In some counties and districts this compensation was
given by established customs, in others customs existed which were
insufficient, in many they did not exist at all. It must be confessed
that often when a tenant leaves his farm there is more compensation
due to the landlord than to the tenant. Human nature being what it is,
the temptation to get as much out of the land just before leaving it
is wellnigh irresistible to many farmers.
In these days, when the landlord is often called upon by the tenant to
do what the tenant used to do himself, the question of compensation to
the tenant must on many estates appear to the landlord extremely
ironical. It is, in the greater number of cases, the landlord who
should receive compensation, and not the tenant; and though he has
power to demand it, such power is over and over again not put in
force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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