the relations between landlord and tenant are generally excellent. Where are the best farm buildings, where the best cottages, where does the owner carry on a home farm often for the assistance of the tenant by letting him have the use of entire horses, well-bred bulls, and rams, if not on the larger estates? The restrictions in leases, so much decried of late years, were nearly always in the interest of good farming, and their abolition will lead to the deterioration of many a holding. Bacon said, 'Where men of great wealth do stoop to husbandry, it multiplieth riches exceedingly' and wiser words were never uttered. Yet these are the men who are singled out for attack by agitators, who are only listened to because the greater number of modern Englishmen are ignorant of the land and everything connected with it. At a time when rents have dwindled, in some cases almost to vanishing point, taxation has increased, and confiscatory schemes and meddlesome restrictions have frightened away capital from the land. Many of the landlords of England would clearly gain by casting off the burden of their heavily weighted property, but they nearly all stick nobly to their duty, and hope for that restoration of confidence in the sanctity of property and of respect for freedom of contract which would do so much towards the rehabilitation of what is still the greatest and most important industry in the country. FOOTNOTES: [665] And an ever increasing burden of taxation. [666] See Appendix III. [667] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1881, pp. 142, 199. [668] _Parliamentary Reports of Commissioners_, 1882, xiv. pp. 9 sq. [669] _Parliamentary Reports of Commissioners_, 1882, xiv. 14. [670] The rise between 1857 and 1878 has been estimated at 20 per cent., and between 1867 and 1877 at 11-1/2 per cent. Hasbach, _op. cit._, p. 291. [671] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, p. 324. [672] See infra, p. 330. [673] _Rural Economy of Southern Counties_, i. 285-6. [674] _Victoria County History: Hereford, Agriculture_. [675] In one respect the Act of 1883 restricted the rights of tenants to compensation, for while the Act of 1875 had expressly reserved the rights of the parties under 'custom of the country', the Act of 1883 provided that a tenant 'shall not claim compensation by custom or otherwise than in manner authorized by this Act for any improvement for which he is entitled to compensation under this Act' (Sec. 57). [676] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 96. [677] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1892), p. 63. [678] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1901), p. 33. Cf. infra, p. 310. [679] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1893), p. 286; (1894), p. 677. Sometimes to artificially raising them. [680] Ibid. (1901), p. 34. [681] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv.