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Indeed, considering the small chance of raising a fortune inthis profession, in comparison of what we see every day realizedby merchants and manufacturers, habit, or the pleasures of acountry life, can alone account for agriculture retaining muchcapital in its employment.
Prescribed rules of management, depriving the tenant of all li-berty of action, treating him as a mere machine, unentitled tothink, and condemning him to one undeviating round, like ablind horse in a bark-mill, have the same degrading effect, ba-nishing from the profession every man of high spirit and enter-prise, to those mercantile or manufacturing employments, wherelie is at liberty to display the energies of his own mind, and toact as a man.
The most that can be said for prescribed rules of management,is, that they may prevent the best known system at the time fromdegenerating. But they have just an equal tendency to preventall farther improvement. In early times, when the condition ofthe tenantry was in a state of greater degradation than at pre-sent, it was not to be expected that much information shouldprevail in that class, or that material improvement should arisefrom that quarter. Now, however, from the greater liberalitywhich has prevailed in the terms of private bargain, with thetendency long shown to a liberal construction of law in favour oftlie tenant’s security, the Scots tenantry have been advanced toa higher rank in the scale of society; and, in an age of suchextended intercourse and communication, there is no deficiencyof information in this class, nor that bigotry to established prac-tice, which is the offspring of ignorance ; so that in many im-proved districts, the tenantry may be considered as much moretit to direct the proprietors, than to be directed by them. Inshort, for a considerable time bypast, there seems to have beenno prevalent deficiency among Scots tenantry, either of skill tocontrive, or of capital to execute : in so much, that where farmsbecome vacant in districts where improvement is less understood,•’le rents offered by tenants from more improved districts, uponthe credit of superior returns from a better system, must eitherdislodge the present occupiers, or force them to adopt that bet-ter system, without which they could not afford equal rent. Forthough the liberality of the proprietor might lead him to give» certain degree of preference to the present possessors, thereare certainly limits, beyond which their expectations of a sacri-fice of pecuniary interest on his part in their favour, wouldhe unreasonable. There is thus a natural security for the spreadof every real agricultural improvement, if not prevented by ab-surd regulations of management; a more productive system un-derstood, will lead to offers of higher rent; and higher rent given,■oust enforce the adoption of the better system.
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