obstructions.

There has been much controversy and several Parliamentary Acts
concerning the regulation of bargains between landlord and tenant.
How a tenant or a landlord can be injured in such a bargain is
impossible to understand, except in so far as a man is injured who
gives L30 for a horse worth only L20. Will Parliament interfere to
protect such horse-purchasers? The matter has been obscured by
omitting to notice that a tenant with a long lease at a fixed rent
possesses a share (often the larger share) of the "landlord
interest," in the language of political economy. As a simple example:
A tenant took, say in 1850, a Scotch farm on a Scotch lease absolute
of nineteen years, at L500 a year. Within two or three years of his
so taking it the rise in wool, potatoes, and other things, caused the
value of the farm to rise to L600 a year, and this increased value
lasted the whole of his lease and some time after. Now, treating the
increase of value of L100 a year as permanent (as it was very soon
regarded both by landlord and tenant), it is clear that this L100 a
year for the period of the lease (say seventeen years to run) went to
the tenant, not to the landlord; and the first seventeen years of an
annuity in fee is worth more than all the rest.

It is evident that on a seven years' (absolute) lease the tenant
would similarly get a good share (not the larger share) in all the
improvement in value that occurred during his lease. Up to ten or
twelve years ago the value of land had been rising very steadily in
the South of England for near half a century. Rents were pushed up
very generally at the termination of every lease, though noblemen,
great county gentlemen, the Church, and the Universities, as a rule,
never raised the rent on an old tenant; but they could raise the rent