CHAP. XX.

INCREASED PRICES.

107

life. Supposing produce to have risen as we haveshown it did in the period, at the rate of a hun-dred and fifty per cent., the value of the new lifeto be placed in the farm would have been muchmore than saved by the advance of prices, whilstthe rent had remained unchanged. In this waytenants of the description here noticed would withprudence and care have saved more in the courseof a century, during which prices had graduallyadvanced to five times their former rate, thanwould be sufficient to purchase their own farms.

By this view of the subject we see that the cul-tivators in England became capitalists, and if theychose rather to rent than to buy land, were en-abled to provide from their capitals the necessarystock of cattle and implements, and to furnish thesums required to pay their labourers till the fruitsof their industry should arrive at maturity, andbecome applicable to that and the other purposesof cultivation.

It is difficult to account for the different coursewhich rural affairs assumed in England from whatat the same period presents itself to our view onlooking at the continental kingdoms, where theoperative cultivators became metayer occupants,and have entailed on their successors all the evilswhich seem inseparably connected with that sys-tem, and which are the greater evil from the diffi-culties which oppose its amelioration.

Much of this difference may be attributed to°ur insular position, and to the security to pro-