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to one individual, and not to forty, but further, it is clearly nought but a little private arrangement between the assignor and the assignee; for although their respective signatures are duly attested, the landlord's assent does not appear thereto at all.[1] The forty were evidently this middle-man's squatters. But it would appear that when the lease fell in, the landlord whose tenants they then became, good-naturedly established to them the benefits of the Plantation Scheme; for they all now received leases for lives with the usual stipulations.
The family of the assignee who has just been alluded to, come in for about seventy-five of the 500 acres under the new arrangement. The love of sub-letting seems still to pursue them; for although the stipulations against this proceeding were renewed in the leases of 1750, we find in an old note book belonging to the landlord who owned the property in the year 1798, the following memorandum respecting their holding: —
"This farm is let mostly to under-tenants far a guinea an acre."
Now, mark the rent for which this land had been let by the landlord in 1750.—Five Shillings an acre. Are we to believe that the family of this assignee had themselves so far improved their holding with buildings, fences, and so forth, as to have it made worth twenty-one shillings an acre before they sub-let it, contrary to their stipulation? We scarcely think so. We fear the assignee did not do by his illicit under-tenants as his landlord had done by him. And what had the landlord done for him? He had let him the land at a rent which would enable him, with much profit to himself to reclaim it, and be able to have a considerable sum to his credit, if he was a thrifty man, at the end of thirty-one years, even after he had delivered up all his improvements in good condition to his landlord, as per agreement. Don't let any one exclaim at the idea of his giving up his improvements; for was it not a bargain? The conditions to build proper houses, quick and weed the fences, scour the ditches, &c., were all in the lease, clearly set forth. It was as though the landlord had said, let us suppose, to some holder of twelve acres, "You shall have these twelve acres for thirty-one years, not at 21s an acre, the price at which you value it amongst yourselves in sub-letting it in an unimproved state to each other, but at 5s an acre, in other words at about £90 for the whole term instead of £390, on the condition that you add what I specify to the value of my land, and restore
- ↑ The landlord's name does appear at the foot of another and a most peculiar endorsement, viz.—a stipulation that if the trusty yoeman and his family attend at the parish church and hear prayers and sermons, he is to be let off £l per annum of his "dues!"
