As I explain elsewhere, a tenant with several years of his lease to run is (economically considered) a part landowner: if the tithe were suddenly abolished, tenants with leases would get relief as well as their landlords. So if a new tax or rate is laid on land (and made payable by the tenant), all tenants with leases will have to pay such tax or rate out of their own pocket so long as their lease lasts; afterwards it will fall wholly on the landlords. It is repeated now, in nearly every country newspaper, that the English farmer cannot compete with the American grower because of the burdens on the land of England. I will not write out (I cannot improve) Ricardo's proof that rent does not enter into price. The "burdens" on land are really first charges on the rackrent and do not affect a year-to-year tenant at all. When a farmer meditates taking a farm he asks not merely what is the rent: he inquires what is the tithe, what the average amount of the rates (and is that likely to increase or diminish during the next seven years); the intending tenant only wants to know what sum in all he will have to pay for the farm; whether any of this payment is called tithe or not, or whether some of it is quit-rent, or whether he is to pay the land tax for his landlord's convenience,--about all this he cares nothing; they are mere questions of names to him. 5. MAKING THE MOST OF OUR LAND. John S. Mill, following W. T. Thornton, advocated a system of petty proprietors against the English system of large farms with hired labourers. Figures were quoted to show the splendid produce got by petty proprietors in France and elsewhere--as the result, however, of infinite toil. The petty proprietors were, moreover, shown to be much better off than our hired labourers; and the magic of property combined with independence was represented as having produced a superior class. These things may have been so, at least in some cases and particular countries, at the date (before 1846) when J. S. Mill originally put forward these views. The liberal, and radical writers on political economy and sociology still follow (most of them) on the same side, which has become in a manner historically the liberal side. There is much against it.