The tenant appeals to him for a reduction, but he might as well ask mercy of a tiger. Then in his despair goes to the landlord.
“My good sir,” says the landlord, beaming upon him benevolently, “I know nothing about these things. The matter is entirely in the hands of Mr. Smithson, my agent. Go to him.”
“But I have been to him and he will do nothing.”
“Really I regret it. But Mr. Smithson knows all about it—I don’t. If he, with a knowledge of the situation—that is what he is there for—can do nothing, I cannot. I am not to be expected to know anything about it, nor can I meddle with business that is his.”
And the poor devil of a tenant, with the prospect of starving on the land or emigrating from the only place on earth which to him is a home, goes away sadly, and My Lord or the Rev., as the case may be, drops his agent a note, saying:—“Jobson was here to get a reduction of his rent. He will stay, and can be made to pay. Be firm with him.”
Then the agent tells Jobson that lowering the rent is out of the question—and Jobson stays, for he does not want to leave. He buys his artificial manures and his fertilizers from the agent, for he can get credit nowhere else, the agent has a handsome commission from the manufacturer, and so between the agent and the landlord, the manufacturer and the usurer, and the rest of them, Jobson works fourteen hours a day only in the end to either lie down and die or by the help of friends get away to America.
THE COST OF “SPORT.”
I know one tenant who, dissatisfied with an agent’s apology for serious and unreasonable raising of his rent, determined to see the duke himself. At the interview His Grace said he really knew nothing about the matter; he had put the re-valuing into the hands of the most eminent man recommended to him; and, in short, if the tenant did not feel comfortable, it was open to him to leave and let another man come in at the new terms. Now this was the cruel truth, but only part of the truth. The tenant could not quit without tremendous sacrifice of his property—to say nothing of his home-love and other feelings. So he answered, “Your Grace, I cannot leave without ruinous loss; I have farmed well for many years; I can get nothing else at my time of life; and hence your power to oppress me.”
All England is dotted with unoccupied farms, and these blotches upon the fair face of nature are becoming more frequent every year.
There are in England about five hundred packs of hounds, numbering about eighty each, or forty thousand in all. The hunting horses number about one hundred and fifteen thousand, and the yearly cost of these hunting establishments is estimated at more than forty-five million dollars.