emigration has a tendency to diminish rather than to increase his rental, and if it has not done so already it is because the number of those who seek to obtain their living by the land, are still out of proportion to the area capable of maintaining them.
Again, the landlord is very often a large employer of labour. Within the last 15 years I myself have paid away upwards of £60,000 in wages alone. During the last half of that period, in consequence of the rise in wages, I have got much less for my money than I did during the first half, and my consequent loss, comparing one period with another, would amount to several thousand pounds, and this has been a direct consequence of emigration. But, though a dealer in land, and a
"If the owners of land be liable to the imputation of usury in their bargains for rent, the best and only effectual corrective will be found in reducing the competition amongst the labourers and occupiers of land by removing the ignorance of our husbandmen, and also the impediments to the extension of employment."
"If these two principles should prove inadequate to establish the equilibrium of the labour market in this country on a sound basis, we have still the vast resource of emigration, which, when used upon a humane principle, will improve our condition at home with extreme and certain benefit to those who leave our shores; and no other principle of emigration ought for a moment to be tolerated."—Digest Devon Commission, Summary, p. 757.
"The only unobjectionable way of enabling tenants to obtain reasonable terms from their landlords, is to diminish the competition for land by lessening the number of competitors." Thornton's Peasant Proprietors, pp. 215-16.
