The Express.
London, England, 1847-09-02 00:00:00

recurring blockades of the Strand or Fleet-street, of
catching his train or nailing his banker.
But, after all, COCK/UI only knows how many
paving boards, and surveyors' boards, how many
rival packs of desperate commissioners, ma_ be fight-
ing over these skeleton houses of Middle-row.
Beyond a doubt the resuscitation of the Holborn
obstruction is, in part at least, owing to the awfully
intricate machinery by which the work of local
government is carried on in London. An ex-
hibition of its racks and pinions, its toothed
wheels and drivers, its pistons and springs, all moved
by the great central engine of selfishness, would
astonish the uninitiated ratepayer. He little
knows at what an expense of official en-
ginery he is paved, lighted, drained, dusted,
and done for. Let him remember that the paving
alone of the metropolis is in the hands of, at
least, 88 different jurisdictions, comprehending many
thousand officials, and governed by not less than 129
acts passed within the present century alone! Let
the dweller in St. George's, before he complains of
his own parochial troubles, think with chastened
thankfulness on the 16 different districts of St.
Pancras, their limits co-extensive with no known
parish boandaries, the mystery of their metes and
bounds locked up in the brains of some early sur-
veyor, or the desk of some close clerk of the peace.
A knowledge of the human anatomy in said to be
an affecting and almost painful acquisition. It sets
men wondering how, with contrivances so supremely
subtle, with mechanism so exquisitely adjusted, we
do not dislocate a joint, or displace an organ, in
every careless action of common life. Similar
thoughts must follow on an acquaintance with the
mysteries of parochial management.
It is inconceivable how any street can ever be pass-
able, how a single lamp can ever be lighted, how a
single sewer can ever carry off its burden, or a single
pram furnish its supply, when the mind dwells on
the many conflicting and curiously balanced powers
that must co-operate in the work of paving, lighting,
and sewerage. In a word, the machinery of self-
government in the metropolis reminds one strongly of
that marvellously complicated apparatus for drawing
a cork, in Hoosnries picture of the Quack's
Cabinet. It is amazingly ingenious; but one wonders
how the sharpest of butlers could possibly susceed in
ever drawing a cork by its assistance.

SOME of oar correspondents will have it that many
English farmers are themselves unwilling to accept
leases, but prefer to go on as yearly tenants. Now
there has been, and perhaps still is, a certain
degree of truth in this assertion, but when exa-
mined it will be found to afford most con-
clusive reasons for adopting the system of leases in
the place of that of yearly tenancies. During
the existence of the corn laws, tenant-
farmers found themselves in this condition—they
had entered their farms under calculations
founded upon prices held out to them by the different
corn laws and their authors. There was always a
certain act-of-parliament price of corn which farmers
expected, and landlords and land agents professed to
ensure, in the absence of special circumstances; and
rents were fixed, and other farming contracts entered
into with reference to such price. Down to the year
1822, 80s. per quarter for wheat was the ideal and act-
of-parliament price; under the corn-law of 1828, 63t. a
quarter was the price promised by legislators and the
legislature, which, under Sir ROBERT PEEL'S act of
1842, was reduced to 565. the quarter. But,
under each and all of these laws the actual
prices were generally below, often much below, the
act-of-parliament promised prices. Farmers, there-
fore, became unwilling to enter into engagements
upon a basis which their yearly experience told them
was delusive ; and hence, until recently, there was
much reluctance on the part of a large proportion of
English farmers to acoept leases. That, however,
has now passed away. The discussions which pre-
ceded the repeal of the corn laws have satisfied
farmers that they mast rely for profit, not upon
mere price, but upon their power to increase
the surplus produce. Now, this it is clearly seen
cannot be done under • yearly tenancy, and,
therefore, farmers, in all the districts of England
which are moderately well farmed, are earnestly de-
manding leases.
In most cases where farmers are still unwill-
ing to eater into the permanent engagements of a
lease, the reservation of the game by the land-
lords will be found to be the chief cause of that un-
willingness. Then the form of the leases to which
landowners would, under the advice of their lawyers
and land-agents, alone agree, is suck as no prudent
farmer would accept; and it was to this part of the
subject we particularly addressed ourselves in the
suggestions lately made as to the terms and form of
farm leases. But to say that farmers would de-
cline leases upon fair and reasonable terms and
conditions is so far from true, that at this
moment the question of lessee and tenant-
right forms the chief subject of remark in all genuine
farmers' meetings.
There is scarcely a farmer who would not imme-
diately adopt a different and a better system of
management, with a rational lease, than he had
before followed as a yearly tenant ; and in number-
less cases, tenants who, as yearly occupiers, have had
insuificientcapital, would, when protectedby leases, ob-
tain from others the capital necessary to avail them-
selves of their improved situation. The fact is, that
the system of managing a farm occupied from year to
year is, and must be, essentially different from that
adopted by a leaseholder. Where a farmer has
a certain term of possession he does various acts of
husbandry in a better and more effectual manner than
he would perform the same acts as a yearly tenant;
he does them once for all, and the consequence is that
the cultivation of the land is conducted in after years
at an absolute] less cost than where such acts had
been lessperfectly performed. The same amount of
capital wo d go further, because laid out in a more
effective manner by the same tenant when farming
with a lease than when merely a yearly tenant.
Thus, there can be no doubt that the simple act of
granting rational leases to all that class of Eng-
lish tenant-farmers who may be called average farmers,
would at once lead to a great and general improvement
in husbandry.
It may be said, and is constantly said, by the
landed gentry, that tenants stay on their farms
for long periods as yearly tenants—that many
of them farm well, notwithstanding the apparently
precarious nature of their tenures—and, therefore,
why should landlords grant leases when they can
get their estates well occupied without part-
ing with the complete and constant control over their
tenantry which the system of yearly tenancies gives
them ? Bat, in point of fact, there le comparatively
little good farming upon estates let only from
ear to year—the few exceptions, such as the
coin Heath farms, and a few individual in-
stances scattered here and there, only proving
the rule as depending on particular circumstances.
farmers having no other means of living, and being
altogether unfitted for any other avocation, go on as
yearly tenants, or even enter upon new engagements
without leases ; but they do not trust their landlords
beyond certain and somewhat narrow limits. They
farm as yearly tenants only, though as such they run
great hazards, by farming too well for mere yearly
holdings.
The landlord's real interests might be fully pro-
tected by the insertion in the lease of some such clause
as that to which we referred the other day—namely,
that where the tenant is mismanaging and deteriora-
ting the farm, the landlord may, notwithstanding the
lease, be at liberty to give six months' notice to quit,
and, unless the arbitrators to whom the tenant may
require the matter to be referred shall award that no
material injury has been done by the tenant's
management, the tenant shall be dispossessed and
required to make good the damage be has caused.
Such a clause would leave the power of dispossessing
• bad tenant as completely in the landlord's hands
as under a yearly tenancy, but would be inoperative
upon a good farmer. The unwillingness on the part of
landowners to give up the control of their land upon
terms that will enable tenants to farm with safety and
profit, ia perfectly unintelligible to those who
regard land simply as property. There is generally a
certain capriciousness in the way in which land-
holders deal with their property— the result probably
of their want of acquaintance with the business of
life,—that diminishes the confidence of men of
business in dealinfulrtl; them, and acts most
prejudicially on husbandry Of Of this the following
short history of a farm in a county near
the metropolis may serve as an illustration.]
Four yews ago a first-rate farmer left the farm at the
expiration of his lease because the landlord would not
renew it without reserving the game, in order to let
it to a gentlemen who occupied the mansion-hoses of