DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0224
2o8 INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
rentals of colleges that my interpretation of this famous act is
correct.
The doctrine that the ownership of the land is limited, and that
by the common law, at least, a man may not in the case of land,
as the Duke of Newcastle thought, " do what he wills with his
own," is no mere antiquarian utterance. It has been appealed to
by those who have attacked the ownership of land, as it is com-
monly understood, not indeed as a principal, but as a powerful
subsidiary argument. What that principal argument is I proceed
to state.
The owner of land has not only, it has been imagined, exacted
in the first place a price for occupancy, under the name of rent,
but has made the claim without according an}- consideration to
the tenant. From this point of view Adam Smith believed that
rent was originally a tax, imposed by the stronger on the weaker.
Now it is certain that even the rudest agriculture produces more
than is necessary for the occupier's subsistence, the replacement of
his outlay, and even provision against risk, and that therefore this
surplus can be exacted by the over-lord. Nor is it quite correct
to say that the payment was made without any equivalent. The
history of English agriculture refutes such an inference, and it is
with English agriculture, and its economic situation, that I am
concerned. The English landowner of the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries did two things for the savage tenant. He guaran-
teed the King's peace, that is the continuity of the farmer's industry
free from the risks of brigandage, and he taught him by his own
example and practice the best system of agriculture which the age
could develop. In ithe age when rent seems most like a tax,
because it was to all intents a fixed and maximum charge, i.e., from
the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century,
the English landowner, whatever his faults, was concerned in
keeping the peace, and securing the farmer in the continuity of
his calling. From the middle of the sixteenth till the middle of
the seventeenth rackrenting of a very harsh kind occurred, and
with very disastrous effects. Another system prevailed during the
greater part of the eighteenth century. At the end of it the rack-
renting was revived, and occasionally with great severity, till the
close of the Continental War. For a time the farmer had little to
rentals of colleges that my interpretation of this famous act is
correct.
The doctrine that the ownership of the land is limited, and that
by the common law, at least, a man may not in the case of land,
as the Duke of Newcastle thought, " do what he wills with his
own," is no mere antiquarian utterance. It has been appealed to
by those who have attacked the ownership of land, as it is com-
monly understood, not indeed as a principal, but as a powerful
subsidiary argument. What that principal argument is I proceed
to state.
The owner of land has not only, it has been imagined, exacted
in the first place a price for occupancy, under the name of rent,
but has made the claim without according an}- consideration to
the tenant. From this point of view Adam Smith believed that
rent was originally a tax, imposed by the stronger on the weaker.
Now it is certain that even the rudest agriculture produces more
than is necessary for the occupier's subsistence, the replacement of
his outlay, and even provision against risk, and that therefore this
surplus can be exacted by the over-lord. Nor is it quite correct
to say that the payment was made without any equivalent. The
history of English agriculture refutes such an inference, and it is
with English agriculture, and its economic situation, that I am
concerned. The English landowner of the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries did two things for the savage tenant. He guaran-
teed the King's peace, that is the continuity of the farmer's industry
free from the risks of brigandage, and he taught him by his own
example and practice the best system of agriculture which the age
could develop. In ithe age when rent seems most like a tax,
because it was to all intents a fixed and maximum charge, i.e., from
the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century,
the English landowner, whatever his faults, was concerned in
keeping the peace, and securing the farmer in the continuity of
his calling. From the middle of the sixteenth till the middle of
the seventeenth rackrenting of a very harsh kind occurred, and
with very disastrous effects. Another system prevailed during the
greater part of the eighteenth century. At the end of it the rack-
renting was revived, and occasionally with great severity, till the
close of the Continental War. For a time the farmer had little to