Pew rent

“ Many of the Highland proprietors, in their haste to get rich, or at least to get money to spend in the fashionable world, either mercilessly, and without warning, cleared their estates of the tenants, or most unseasonably oppressed them in the matter of rent. The great fault of many of the landlords—for they were not all alike—was in bringing about too suddenly changes, in themselves, perhaps, desirable enough. Rents seem to have been too suddenly raised to such a rate as tended to inspire the tenant with despair of being able to meet it. ”

“ It is a great advantage that the rents of the houses are two thousand pounds a year, not only from the point of view of my income, but also because it means that my tenants are desirable. Bad hats and swindlers do not run to such high rents.
Indeed, the only tenant about whom I was doubtful was Scruton. Ever since the good gum millionaire had tried to get his house rent free by that ingenious ghost trick, I had been expecting more games from him. He really was a millionaire, or thereabouts. ”

“ The sordid subject came up again for discussion when Phyllis and I went to have a preliminary chat with the house-agent.
"You have spoken with eloquence and conviction about reception-rooms, out-houses, railway stations, golf courses, and h. and c.," said I, "but sooner or later some one must rise and say a few pointed words about Rent."
"That all depends on what you are prepared to give," he replied. "The rough-and-ready rule is to fix one's rent at a tenth of one's income."
"Yes, but which income?" I asked. "For I have two incomes and I can't afford a separate house for each." ”

“ They burn kelp in great quantities, and then send it away in ships, which come regularly to purchase them. This new source of riches has raised the rents of many maritime farms; but the tenants pay, like all other tenants, the additional rent with great unwillingness; because they consider the profits of the kelp as the mere product of personal labour, to which the landlord contributes nothing. However, as any man may be said to give, what he gives the power of gaining, he has certainly as much right to profit from the price of kelp as of any thing else found or raised upon his ground. ”

“ The tenant, although ground down by the constant rise of rents, lives among his equals, peasants like himself who have tenants whom they use just as the large land holder does his. His father, his brother, perhaps the man himself, possesses something like an acre of land, which he lets at as high a rent as he can get. In the public house peasant proprietors will boast of the high rents they get for their lands, just as they might boast of having sold their pigs or potatoes very dear. ”

“ It may be in fish or kelp, instead of money, but we will manage to pay, if Mr. Callum be not hard upon us.”
“I shall tell Callum to receive my interest in any shape that it may suit you best to pay it; in fish, or in kelp, or in grain, or even in peat. This is but fair considering how far you are from any market. As for the real rent, do not trouble your head about that at present. It will be long before you will be called on for any; and I only mentioned it to show you what you have to expect if you grow rich.”
“Will our growing rich make us liable to pay what your honour calls real rent? ”

“ We are at our Office quiet, only for lack of money all things go to rack. Our very bills offered to be sold upon the Exchange at 10 per cent. loss. We are upon getting Sir R. Ford's house added to our Office. But I see so many difficulties will follow in pleasing of one another in the dividing of it, and in becoming bound personally to pay the rent of L200 per annum, that I do believe it will yet scarce come to pass. The season very sickly every where of strange and fatal fevers. ”

“ What is most singular of all is that the middlemen, who are subletting and subdividing their holdings at tremendous rack-rents, are among the most prominent in refusing to pay the chief landlord. They see a great immediate advantage to themselves in the present movement, for they give but short credit to their tenants, while they enjoy the full benefit of a "hanging gale," or owing always half a year's rent, according to the custom of this county. ”

“ On the whole, the actual landlord is by no means the monster he is popularly represented to be. He will wait rather than change a good tenant. He will make no fuss if the back rent is paid ever so slowly. To many respectable folk, keeping the home together on perhaps 22s. a week, this is an inestimable boon. It is wonderful how, among these steady people, rent is made a first charge on income, though naturally, given enough pressure, rent must wait while such income as there is goes to buy food. ”

“ The sole tie that subsisted between them—the one link that bound the poor man to the rich one—was that of the tenant to his landlord. Owen's father and grandfather before him had been cottiers on the estate; but being very poor and humble men, and the little farm they rented, a half-tilled half-reclaimed mountain tract, exempt from all prospect of improvement, and situated in a remote and unfrequented place, they were merely known by their names on the rent-roll. ”

“ But then they did enlarge upon the slavery of the people—that they are taxed more than the real estates they have; nay, it is an ordinary thing for people to desire to give the King all their land that they have, and themselves become only his tenants, and pay him rent to the full value of it: so they may have but their earnings, But this will not be granted ”

“ Everybody is not so deep in his landlord's books as the irreconcileable Thomas Browne, of Cloontakilla; but a vast number of poor tenants owe one and a half and two years' rent. I speak of those whose holdings are "set" from 3l. to 8l. per annum. The rent has not impoverished them this year at any rate; they have had a fair harvest, their beast or few sheep have fetched good prices, and yet they are miserably poor. ”

“ Rents must be all paid up to the day, and afore; no allowance for improving tenants, no consideration for those who had built upon their farms: no sooner was a lease out, but the land was advertised to the highest bidder; all the old tenants turned out, when they spent their substance in the hope and trust of a renewal from the landlord. All was now let at the highest penny to a parcel of poor wretches, who meant to run away, and did so, after taking two crops out of the ground. Then fining down the year’s rent came into fashion [16] —anything for the ready penny ”

“ Their returns are certain for, mark you, every tradesman pays his rent every Monday morning, there is no delay. If it be not paid the hour it is due, the landlord is empowered by law to send a bailiff to the house, to keep him there at an expense to the tenant of three shillings per day—and to request him, at the end of five days, to sell off the goods and chattels provided the demand is still unsatisfied. I know no better investment for capital, be it large or small, than that of which I speak. There are no taxes, no ground-rents, and the tenant is bound to keep his premises in repair. ”

“ You can't live on arrears? And, my dear Fred, what cause have you to grumble? The amount of rent affects me only; whereas I offer you the shooting and fishing, which has nothing to do with these matters. Why can't you amuse yourself and let me alone? What I have done I have considered. I have inquired into the condition of these people. To make rents practicable is not to throw away money. Indeed—but I am not going to discuss the question with you at all. Go away and get out your fly-book, and take Mr. Meredyth down to the Garra, and see if you can pick up a grilse before dinner. ”

“ If the payment of tithe were abolished to-morrow, can any sane man believe that the tenant-farmer would be allowed to put the tithe into his pocket or to keep it there? Can any sane man believe that rents would not rise exactly in proportion to the amount of charges from which the tenant was relieved? Rent is nothing more than the money payment supposed to represent the just return which the owner claims from the occupier for105 the privilege of cultivating his land. The occupier makes his account and calculates how much he can gain by the compact. The landlord’s share is his rent. ”

“ Leaving details aside, and the minute instructions on the true mode of skirmishing with the myrmidons of the law, the idea of using the very rent claimed by the landlord as a provision for feeding the struggle against him is in itself perfection—a real masterpiece of strategy. An artist can only feel the warmest admiration for such a combination of everything [267] that is most pleasant to the heart of the agrarian warrior and most deadly to the landlord’s cause. ”

“ But the fact is that the landlord's representative—his steward—has been forced to this step by the action and opinion of the tenant-farmers.
The argument is very cogent and clear. They say, 'We pay a rent which is almost as much as the land will bear; we suffer by foreign competition, bad seasons and so on, the market is falling, and we are compelled to reduce our labour expenditure. But then our workmen say that at the home farm the wages paid are a shilling or two higher, and therefore they will not accept a reduction. ”

“ Those who have hitherto paid but little, will not suddenly be persuaded to pay much, though they can afford it. As ground is gradually improved, and the value of money decreases, the rent may be raised without any diminution of the farmer’s profits: yet it is necessary in these countries, where the ejection of a tenant is a greater evil, than in more populous places, to consider not merely what the land will produce, but with what ability the inhabitant can cultivate it. ”

“ He let her have the flat. By night he was amazed to find a flock of half a dozen robust youngsters domiciled under his roof. They had indeed been in Greenwood; but they had come back from the cemetery to stay. And stay they did, the rent being paid.
High rents, slack work, and low wages go hand in hand in the tenements as promoters of overcrowding. The rent is always one-fourth of the family income, often more. The fierce competition (p. 097) for a bare living cuts down wages; and when loss of work is added, the only thing left is to take in lodgers to meet the landlord's claim. ”

“ It has been as much as I could do to get together forty-five dollars each month to pay you. Indeed, I can pay no more."
"Pardon me for saying that that is no affair of mine," said the landlord brusquely. "If you can't pay the rent, by all means move into a smaller house. If you stay here you must be prepared to pay fifty dollars a month." ”

“ It is therefore the different degree of fertility which causes rent, and not the will of the landlord.”
“And when the people complain,” said Angus, “that rent is paid by the consumer as an arbitrary tax, they forget or do not know that rent is the consequence and not the cause of high price. Your barley bannocks and Murdoch’s look pretty much alike on the table, and would sell for the same price; but yours are produced at near double the cost of his, and therefore Murdoch pays the laird a part of the profits of his.” ”

“ Years before it had fallen into Peter's hands at a small price, and he had every year since realized from it in the way of rent a sum equal to one half the purchase-money. No one who has lived in a city can help knowing how much more proportionally the poor are compelled to pay for their scanty and insufficient accommodations than the rich, or those in moderate circumstances. No class of property is made to pay a larger percentage than the wretched tenement-houses which seem adapted to furnish as little accommodation as possible to those who are compelled to occupy them. ”

“ But when they continue so long as they have done in this country, it is impossible for the landlord to do otherwise than proportion his rent accordingly, and take the chance of being obliged to lessen it again, on the return of the currency to its natural state. ”

“ Fining down the year’s rent.—When an Irish gentleman, like Sir Kit Rackrent, has lived beyond his income, and finds himself distressed for ready money, tenants obligingly offer to take his land at a rent far below the value, and to pay him a small sum of money in hand, which they call fining down the yearly rent. The temptation of this ready cash often blinds the landlord to his future interest.
[Q] Driver.—A man who is employed to drive tenants for rent; that is, to drive the cattle belonging to tenants to pound. The office of driver is by no means a sinecure. ”

“ She is a fine confident lady, I think, but not so pretty as I once thought her. My Lord did also seal a lease for the house he is now taking in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which stands him in 250 per annum rent. Thence by water to my brother's, whom I find not well in bed, sicke, they think, of a consumption, and I fear he is not well, but do not complain, nor desire to take anything. ”

“ In this sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved helpmate.
Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure. There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact no more than a “fair rent” ”

“ It is assumed that, if wages or profits fell below the points, which, on a comparison of the advantages and drawbacks, pecuniary and other, of farming and other occupations, are considered to be normal in the farming industry, some labourers and farmers would seek some more advantageous employment, and that, if they rose above, some fresh competitors would enter the ranks of agriculture. It is assumed that landlord and tenant are actuated by competitive considerations alone, the one trying to obtain the highest and the other the lowest rent. ”