Page:Agricultural Progress - Drainage.djvu/12

 only prove defective execution, and furnish no valid arguments against drainage.

As to landlords' difficulties in executing drainage, there are virtually none. Financial companies advance money to any amount at a moderate rate of interest; and, as a rule (I admit there are exceptions), drainage under Government inspection is a guarantee for efficient execution. True, in not a few instances, farmers object to having no control over the drainage of their farms, and do not like to pay interest on drainage equivalent to an increase of rental of 6s. or 7s. per acre. Landowners, however, have the power to drain in their own hands, and beneficial it is to the interest of themselves and their tenants when they exercise it. It is, however, only fair to tenant farmers to state that many of them are equally anxious with their landlords to have their farms drained on a proper system, as I have found in the draining of the extensive estates of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Marquis of Downshire, and Admiral Warde, where the tenants not only readily agreed to pay the interest on the outlay, but in every way facilitated the progress of the works. Owners and occupiers, indeed, reap equally satisfactory returns from drainage, the former getting their estates permanently improved without expending one shilling of their own; the latter, by paying seven per cent, interest per annum, realising in lieu 15 per cent, value.

To revert to the undrained area. Computing the same to be one-fifth of the cultivated area, as above stated, there