Farmers have long since discovered that it is best to rent under a very large owner, whether personal as in this case, or impersonal as a college or corporation.  A very large owner like this can be, and is, more liberal.  He puts up sheds, and he drains, and improves, and builds good cottages for the labourers.  Provided, of course, that no serious malpractice comes to light, he, as represented by his steward, never interferes, and the tenant is personally free.  No one watches his goings out and comings in; he has no sense of an eye for ever looking over the park wall.  There is a total absence of the grasping spirit sometimes shown.  The farmer does not feel that he will be worried to his last shilling.  In case of unfavourable seasons the landlord makes no difficulty in returning a portion of the rent; he anticipates such an application.  Such immense possessions can support losses which would press most heavily upon comparatively small properties.  At one side of the estate the soil perchance is light and porous, and is all the better for rain; on the other, half across the county, or quite, the soil is deep and heavy and naturally well watered and flourishes in dry summers.  So that there is generally some one prospering if another suffers, and thus a balance is maintained.

A reserve of wealth has, too, slowly accumulated in the family coffers, which, in exceptional years, tides the owner over with little or no appreciable inconvenience.  With an income like this, special allowances, even generous allowances, can be and are made, and so the tenants cease to feel that their landlord is living out of their labour.  The agreements are just; there is no rapacity.  Very likely the original lease or arrangement has expired half a century since; but no one troubles to renew it.  It is well understood that no change will be effected.  The tenure is as steady as if the tenant had an Act of Parliament at his back.

When men have once settled, they and their descendants remain, generation after generation.  By degrees their sons and sons’ descendants settle too, and the same name occurs perhaps in a dozen adjacent places.  It is this fixed unchangeable character of the district which has enabled the mass of the tenants not indeed to become wealthy, but to acquire a solid, substantial standing.  In farming affairs money can be got together only in the slow passage of years; experience has proved that beyond a doubt.  These people have been stationary for a length of time, and the moss of the proverb has grown around them.  They walk sturdily, and look all men in the face; their fathers put money in the purse.  Times are hard here as everywhere, but if they cannot, for the present season, put more in that purse, its contents are not, at all events, much diminished, and enable them to maintain the same straightforward manliness and independence.  By-and-by, they know there will come the chink of the coin again.