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CHAPTER VI.
THAT DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND MANNERS TEND TO RAISE
RENTS AND SHORTEN THE TERMS OF LEASES.
What has been said of servants and masters is applicable, to a
certain extent, to land-owners and farming tenants; but this
subject deserves to be considered by itself.
In America there are, properly speaking, no farming tenants; every man owns the ground he tills. It must be admitted that democratic laws tend greatly to increase the number of land-owners, and to diminish that of farming tenants. Yet what takes place in the United States is much less attributable to the institutions of the country than to the country itself. In America land is cheap, and any one may easily become a land-owner; its returns are small, and its produce cannot well be divided between a land-owner and a farmer. America therefore stands alone in this as well as in many other respects, and it would be a mistake to take it as an example.
I believe that in democratic as well as in aristocratic countries there will be land-owners and tenants, but the connexion existing between them will be of a different kind. In aristocracies the hire of a farm is paid to the landlord, not only in rent, but in respect, regard, and duty: in democracies the whole is paid in cash. When estates are divided and passed from hand to hand, and the permanent connexion which existed between families and the soil is dissolved, the land-owner and the tenant are only casually brought into contact. They meet for a moment to settle the conditions of the agreement, and then lose sight of each other; they are two strangers brought together by a common interest, and who keenly talk over a matter of business, the sole object of which is to make money.
In proportion as property is subdivided and wealth distributed over the country, the community is filled with people whose former
