• FARM RENTS AND THE LAW OF DISTRESS.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR-1
Sin,—In your notice of the meeting of the Farmers' Alliance at Westminster in last week's Spectator, you say," It is a little doubt- ful if the law of distress does not keep down rents, by rendering their payment so certain." I am sure that the agricultural world would not admit such a doubt, for a moment. On the contrary, it is certain that the general tendency of the law of distress has been in precisely the reverse direction. Daring the last ten years there have been numberless cases in which landlords have let farms to men with insufficient capital, or wanting in agri- cultural knowledge, or both, simply because they have been willing to pay more rent than genuine farmers, who understood their business, could be induced to give. Such men were bound to come to grief; but when the catastrophe came, the landlord has always secured his rent, although every other creditor has been allowed to suffer. Every practical agriculturist could bear me out in this, one of the most patent facts in the agricul- tural inflation of a few years back.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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