Agricultural and pastoral.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 556, 2 March 1868, Page 4

Agricultural and pastoral.

THE TENANT FARMER. (From the Canterbury Times, Bth February.) We assorted, in a previous article, that the purchasing clause system had been productive of much evil to the agricultural interest in this province, and warned those who were desirous of obtaing land against rushing blindfold into its meshes. To those who are thinking of taking up land under this system, we would say-—“ Enquire well into every particular respecting it, and calculate the cost before you venture. Can you, taking into consideration the low prices likely to rule here for all classes of produce in the future, afford to give £6 or £7 an acre fur land, besides the cost of your improvements in the shape of fencing, &c. ? Your choice of locality is limited. Being a poor man, it is of no use your taking up laud so far from a market as will preclude you from growing corn profitably, for you must either grow corn or keep cattle, and you very probably have not sufficient means to enable you to buy a sufficient number of cows to enable you to make a living out of butter at 8d per pound. If you take up land near a market, you will have to select from such unpurchased lands as are left, simply because they are not worth the buying, and you will waste your life and energies in a hopeless struggle with debt and difficulty, and spend the strength of your manhood in labour on an ungrateful and sterile soil, getting nothing but meagre crops and barren pastimes, till, wearied with continual disappointment, you throw the land up, and leave it a poorer man than when you first came to live upon it.” The old purchasing system—<£s an acre in five years, and 5s an acre rem per annum, or in reality 12| per cent interest per annum on the actual cos) of the land, besides a bonus of thirtj per cent, per annum, —is about as great an advantage as capital has evei gained over necessity and credulity and says very little for the credit o; its inventor, whoever be may havt been. It has now fortunately exploded, but not before doing serious mis chief. Let us enquire into the systen; which has, in a measure, taken its place, and under which the tenan pays 10s an acre cash, and £2 in 1 years, besides an annual rent of 5s ai acre, or, say, 17 per cent, per anuun on the actual cost to the purchaser besides a bonus of over 14 per cent per annum—the whole of which, o course, the tenant has to pay, beside sinking his 10s an acre in the first ia stance.

A ni2.il engaged in any ordinary bu* einess would never dream of rendering himself liable to pay so preposterous an interest as Ibis, Is farming such

an exceedingly profitable occupation that a discreet and wise man can venture to hope for such returns as will allow hiih to pay it ? Certainly not. Every penny a farmer earns is dearly earned—is earned with more labour and risk than any other business, and he has no right £o hamper himself with engagements which he has no reasonable expectation of being able to meet. Est those who have mono” to

invest ue sausiied with uioderatc interest ; let them buy the land, and let it on long leases to such tenants as they may be satisfied have sufficient means to work the land properly. A twenty-one years’ lease, with a rental commencing at (say) 5s an acre, and rising every seven years from 5s to 10s, and from 10s to 15s, —with such clauses and stipulations as may be agreed upon iu reference to the working of the land, improvements, &c.— would ensure good tenants, and would be a safe and yearly improving investment, yielding 12h per cent, upon its cash value as it improved, A tenant holding land like this would be able to make what outlay he thought desirable on the land, being sure of his te-

cure, and not dreading, as under the purchasing clause system, that he may not be able to pay when his time was up, and so sinking his money. The owner of the property held in this way ifiight also, in many instances, be induced to make improvements for his tenant on condition of receiving a certain annual per-centage on the cost of those improvements, in addition to the rent. And this plan, prudently carried out, might be of great service to the farmer. For instance, on a moderatesized corn farm a good granary would be very useful, and would save a good deal of the cost of thatching, and the loss incurred through mice and rats, which. UDOU C0 1 ' n tliiMiirrh thp ’ I *'*" winter cannot be less than one shilling a bushel, and in many seasons almost absurds the extra price which corn so kept may fetch. The farmer, seeing this, becomes "ery anxious to get a granary to store his corn iu bulk, and not having sufficient spare cash to build himself, goes to his landlord and gets him to erect the building, paying interest on the money so expended. Holding a lease, the tenant gets the full beaetit of his improvements, and takes a lively interest his farm. The landlord gets his rent punctually, because his property is let at a reasonable rental, and the expiration of (he lease is possessed of a valuable property iu a far different state from what it would have been had it been let under the purchasing clause system, the holder of which, seeing his inability to purchase, and not caring to mortgage, has let run to rack and rain, as many a section is now being treated, and for which no rent has been paid for a year or two. If men farming largely could manage to erect cottages on their farms, in which their servants could live, a good many married men who now patronise the purchasing clause system, would not be so anxious to enter into it. A man and wife, having probably a small family growing up about them, arej not likely to be very comfortable when living as indoor servants nor are their chances of finding employment, as such, very good. They naturally enough desire to have a home of their own, and so go into business themselves, with, often enough, very inadequate means. If this class of men lived in cottages away from their employers’ house, and got a certain yearly wage without rations, as is usual in England, they would become settled and satisfied, would look upon their cottage as fteir home, and would become a class of farm laborers well up to their work, obliging and civil to their employers, because they would value their places. A feeling of mutual esteem would spring up between them ; we should

uot hear so many complaints, that men are ignorant in their work, lazy, and not to be trusted, and that so soon as they become good hands they go away and start for themselves, so there is no encouragement to teach them. We should have good, honest, experienced workmen, earning suffi cient wages to keep themselves comfortably—and lay by for a rainy day too—and we should prevent the increase of a class of needy, slovenly, debt-hapsrsd farmers, who no* do themselves no good, but do others a good deal of harm, because they glut our market with their produce, and

because their necessities create a sys- 1 them of loans and usury which place them in the power of unscrupulous people. If we would ensure good farm laborers, let us do our share to make them so; if we want to keep them we must make them comfortable. Two or three decent cottages on a large farm would not cost much, and would be the means of causing many ] a man to settle down comfortably, and ; a capacity j in which he would be far more useful, < and ten times more happy, than as a < holder of land under any purchasing 1 clause system ever yet intwduced into ] Canterbury. (