rm. For though they extended
the ordinary term of their location only to nine years, yet they
encouraged a more permanent letting to farm with the condition of
improvement, as well as of annual payment, on the part of the tenant,
where the land had lain rough and neglected,--and therefore invented
this species of engrafted holding, in the later times, when property
came to be worse distributed by falling into a few hands.

This denial of landed property to the gross of the people has this
further evil effect in preventing the improvement of land, that it
prevents any of the property acquired in trade to be regorged, as it
were, upon the land. They must have observed very little, who have not
remarked the bold and liberal spirit of improvement which persons bred
to trade have often exerted on their land-purchases: that they usually
come to them with a more abundant command of ready money than most
landed men possess; and that they have in general a much better idea, by
long habits of calculative dealings, of the propriety of expending in
order to acquire. Besides, such men often bring their spirit of commerce
into their estates with them, and make manufactures take a root, where
the mere landed gentry had perhaps no capital, perhaps no inclination,
and, most frequently, not sufficient knowledge, to effect anything of
the kind. By these means, what beautiful and useful spots have there not
been made about trading and manufacturing towns, and how has agriculture
had reason to bless that happy alliance with commerce! and how miserable
must that nation be, whose frame of polity has disjoined the landing and
the trading interests!

* * * * *

The great prop of this whole system is not pretended to be its justice
or its utility, but the supposed danger to the state, which gave rise to
it originally, and which, they apprehend, would return, if this system
were overturned. Whilst, say they, the Papists of this kingdom were
possessed of landed property, and of the influence consequent to such
property, their allegiance to the crown of Great Britain was ever
insecure, the public peace was ever liable to be broken, and Protestants
never could be a moment secure either of their properties or of their
lives. Indulgence only made them arrogant, and power daring; confidence
only excited and enabled them to exert their inherent treachery; and the
times which they generally selected for their most wicked