THE RENT OF LAND.
[To TRU EDITOR Or TI/11 "SPROTATOR.1 Szn,—Mr. Alfred Mond, writing in the Times of the 22nd inst., gives it as his opinion that land let at lls. 9d. per acre must be of "an extraordinarily poor character." I have no doubt that whatever land Mr. Mond may own brings him in con- siderably more than this, but the rental is not so exceptionally low for land of a purely agricultural character, without any advantages of position, as he seems to think. When I was rector of a country parish some twelve years ago I had the opportunity of knowing something of the circumstances of such a parcel of land. It consisted in all of about 1,375 acres, contained in three farms with my own glebe. One farm of 470 acres was let at 17s. per acre; one of 460 at 12s. ; the third of 350 at 7s. 61; my glebe, of 25 acres, at 10s. This works out at almost exactly 13s. We have, of course, to deduct the tithe, of which the nominal amount was 4s. 5d., the actual. 3s., per acre. This brings down the net value to 10s. The land was of good average quality. One farmer sent up large quantities of milk to Loudon ; another made a good amount of excellent butter. The wheat averaged nearly forty bushels to the acre; the barley and oats wore correspondingly good. The only land in the parish which might have been described as "extraordinarily poor" had once been arable of quite average fertility—an old parishioner told me that he had seen a barley crop of 450 quarters taken from the 50 acres—but the change in agricultural conditions had thrown it out of cultivation. Some of the land, on the other hand, was remarkably good. One of my glebe fields produced in the great drought of 1892 an aftermath which must have paid the whole of my tenant's rent. The heavy amount of the tithe-rent charge is, I imagine, some indication of the value of the land. "Extraordinarily poor " land would certainly not have been charged at such a rate in the commutation of
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