“I hold under a religious community.  I have a three-years’ lease of the bare land.  The live and dead farm-stock is my own property.  It represents an enormous capital, which is liable to all sorts of accidents.  But in our dear country one must risk a great deal to gain a little.

“If the land, which is almost all of fine quality, were my own, I should bring nearly the whole of it under the plough; but I am expressly forbidden by a clause in my lease to break up the best land, for fear of exhausting it by growing corn.  No doubt such would be the result in the course of time, because we apply no manure; but of course the inferior land which I am allowed to break up will be worn out much sooner, and will in the end become almost worthless.  The monks knowing this, take care that the best land shall not lose its quality, and oblige me to keep it in pasture for cattle.  Thus I grow little corn merely because the good fathers will not let me grow a great deal.  I cultivate first one piece of land, then another.  On my farm, as throughout the Agro Romano, cultivation is but a passing accident; and so long as this continues, the country will be unhealthy.

“I raise cattle, which, as you will presently see, is sometimes a profitable pursuit, sometimes quite the contrary.  On the whole of my farm I have no shelter for my cattle.  I asked the monks to build me some sheds, offering to pay an increased rent in proportion to outlay.  The monk who acts as the man of business of the convent, shrugged his shoulders.  ‘What can you be thinking of?’ he said; ’you know we have only a life interest in the property.  To comply with your request, we must spend our income for the benefit of our successors:  and what care we for our successors?  No, we look to the present usufruct; the future is no concern of ours—­we have no children!’ And the friar is right.  Well, he went on to say that I was at liberty to build at my own cost as many sheds as I liked, which of course would belong to the convent at the expiration of my lease.  I replied that I had no objection to erect the sheds, if the convent would grant me a lease of reasonable length.  But just then it occurred to me very opportunely, that the canon law does not recognize leases for more than three years, and that on the very day when my sheds were completed, the pious fathers might find it convenient to pick a quarrel with me.  So here the matter dropped.  Although our cattle are naturally hardy they are bound to suffer from exposure to the weather.  A hundred cows under shelter will yield the same quantity of milk through the winter as five hundred in the open air, at half the cost.  A large portion of the hay we strew about the pastures for the cattle, is trodden underfoot and spoilt instead of being eaten; and if rain falls, the whole is spoilt.  Calculate the loss of milk, the cost of cartage over a wide range of land, the damage done to the pastures