Leases were the exception throughout England, though more prevalent in the west.[642] The greater proportion of farms were held on yearly agreements terminable by six months’ notice on either side, a system preferred by the landlord as enabling him to retain a greater hold over his land, and acquiesced in by the tenant because of easy rents.  In spite of this insecurity of tenure and the absence of Agricultural Holdings Acts, the tenants invested their capital largely with no other security than the landlord’s character, ’for in no country of the world does the character of any class of men stand so high for fair and generous dealing as that of the great body of the English landlords.’

The custom of tenant-right was unknown except in certain counties, Surrey, Sussex, the Weald of Kent, Lincoln, North Notts, and in part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.[643] Where it existed, the agriculture was on the whole inferior to that of the districts where it did not, and it had frequently led to fraud in a greater or less degree.  Many farmers were in the practice of ’working up to a quitting’, or making a profit by the difference which their ingenuity and that of their valuer enabled them to demand at leaving as compared with what they paid on entry.  The best farmers as well as the landlords were said to be disgusted with the system.  The dislike for leases in the days immediately before the repeal of the Corn Laws was partly due to the uncertainty how long protection would last; but chiefly then, as afterwards, to the fact that if a man improved his farm under a lease he had nearly always to pay an increased rent on renewal, but if he held from year to year his improvement, if any, was so gradual and imperceptible that it was hardly noticed and the rent was not raised.  It may also be attributable to the modern disinclination to be bound down to a particular spot for a long period.  At all events, the general dislike of farmers for leases is a curious commentary on the assertions of those writers who said that leases were his chief necessity.

The disparity of the labourer’s wages in 1850 was most remarkable, ranging from 15s. a week in parts of Lancashire to 6s. in South Wilts, the average of the northern counties being 11s. 6d., and of the southern 8s. 5d. a difference due wholly to the influence of manufactures, which is still further proved by the fact that in Lancashire in 1770 wages were below the average for England.  In fact since Young’s time wages in the north had increased 66 per cent., in the south only 14 per cent.  In Berkshire and Wiltshire there had been no increase in that period, and in Suffolk an actual decrease.  It is not surprising to learn that in some southern counties wages were not sufficient for healthy sustenance, and the consequence was, that there, the average amount of poor relief per head of population was 8s. 8-1/2d., but in the north 4s. 7-3/4d., and the percentage of paupers was twice as great in the former as in the