all the more by a jump when a new man came in. During all these years
the tenant-farmers complained rarely of their leases, though they
were often subject to covenant nuisances about cropping, selling off
the farm, game, and incoming for the new tenant.

But during the last ten years the process is reversed. A farmer took
a farm for L500 a year for seven years in the south of England, and
before the lease had run half out the farm was not worth L400 (and in
many cases not L300). Here the tenant suffered a heavy loss. When in
former years he got a gain he never proposed to allow his landlord 15
per cent extra rent. But now that the drop in value of such farms has
taken place, and probably will not proceed further, a tenant who
takes a new lease requires no Act of Parliament to protect him: he
can protect himself. By the date the Abolition of the Game Laws (a
wrong but intelligible phrase) was carried, the farmers in the South
of England were in a position not to take any benefit under that Act,
but to covenant for all the game and sporting on their farms for
themselves. So as to the Act regulating the leases between tenant and
landlord, where they chose to avail themselves of it, the tenant now
can generally get more favourable terms outside the provisions of the
Act. Farms are so down, tenants so scarce, that landlords have to
give way on all minor points. Wherever Government interference
operates at all, it is almost sure to operate harmfully. Consider for
a moment the case of "incoming." Formerly, by the "custom of the
country" south of London, the incoming tenant paid for two years'
dressing for the corn crops, north of London he paid the outgoing
tenant only for one year's dressing, by the custom of the country
too. The question practically only amounted to increasing by 5 per
cent the capital necessary to take the farm south of London. Now what
can be gained by Government interference in such a matter as this, in