figures to make him believe that it is so;--but the figures show it. The yield of wheat in South Australia has always been poor, but it has greatly fallen off. In six years, from 1860-61 to 1865-66, it averaged about twelve bushels an acre, and in the six subsequent years it averaged only nine bushels an acre. The farmer usually owns the land. The system of tenant-farming is by no means unknown in the colony, but it is not popular either with tenant or landlord. The landlord obtains none of those side-wind advantages from his position as owner,--advantages over and above the rent,--which are so valued in the possession and are so dear to the imagination among ourselves. There is neither political power nor political prestige attached to such ownership. It has no peculiar grace of its own as it has with us. The privileges of a squirearchy are quite unknown in the colonies, or, if they exist at all, belong to great graziers and squatters,--or to men who hold large tracts of land in their own hands, and not to those who let their acres. There are game laws,--for the protection of birds in the close season,--but there are no game laws on behalf of the landowner. There is nothing picturesque attaching to the receipt of rural rents, no audit dinners, no dependency grateful alike to the landlord and to the tenant, no feeling that broad acres confer a wide respect. What percentage can a man get for his money if he let land to farmers, and what security will he have for his income? Those are the considerations, and those only, which bear upon the question. As well as I could learn details on the subject,--as to which no accurate information can be obtained because the arrangement is not sufficiently general to produce it,--a landlord may let cleared and enclosed land, worth for sale in the market about £6 an acre, for 10_s._ an acre;--and he may thus obtain, if he get his rent, something more than nine per cent. for his money. This would do very well as a speculation, if he were sure or nearly sure to get it, as are our landlords at home. But when bad years come the tenants do not pay. It is regarded almost as a matter of course that the payment of agricultural rents is to depend on the season. If the land refuse her increase, why is the loss to fall on the tenant harder than on the owner? The owner, no doubt, has the law on his side; but the tenant understands very well that when the land is barren, the law will be barren also. Unless his rent be remitted in such years, or at least in part remitted, he simply gives up his holding and goes elsewhere,--with his children and his plough, or without his plough if the landlord or other creditor should have seized it. The result is that the landlord is satisfied to remit half the rent in bad years, and the whole rent in very bad years. The further and final result is that the system of letting land to tenant farmers is unpalatable and unprofitable,--and therefore unusual.