2. It is clear that tithes, poor-rates, and other permanent charges, fall upon the landlord's rent, and not on the farmer's profit. They diminish rent. This is a point on which much misunderstanding prevails. A loud outcry is raised amongst tenants at this time of agricultural suffering against the heavy payments demanded of them for special taxes imposed upon land; a strong agitation is rising to obtain their repeal, as being unjustifiable wrongs inflicted on the most meritorious of industries. It is not perceived that these charges figured as items in the cost of production when the farmer was calculating what rent the farm would warrant him to pay: they diminished the rent at the cost of the landlord. Tithes and rates took their places in the estimate of the debit side quite as really as the number of horses, or the quantity of manure, which the farm would require. We have seen that rent makes its appearance only after every expense has been provided for, and a legitimate profit secured; then, and not till then, the calculation of the rent begins. If the farming world succeeds in removing these burdens, wholly or in part, from the shoulders of the tenants, there can be no doubt that rents will proportionately rise. The landlords would argue, with entire justice, that all other circumstances remaining the same, the collective farming profit had become larger by the disappearance of these taxes, and as the tenant was entitled only to his natural rate of profit, the increase of surplus would legitimately belong to him. If the tenant repelled such a claim, the landlord would be easily able to obtain the rent he claimed from competing farmers who would be satisfied with the natural profit of the business. One exception, however, must be allowed to this conclusion--the case, namely, of a tenant who, upon a long lease, had contracted to pay a definite rent for many years. Such a tenant has taken upon himself the chances of the cost of production during a lengthened period, it may be nineteen or twenty-one years, being larger or smaller. If it diminishes during the interval, he gains: if it increases, he loses. Practically he has insured the landlord's rent, during the continuance of the lease, against diminution. For all increase or diminution of rates he fares as if he were the landlord.