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a presents of his house and (ground to any one who will take it; but of course could be no one) will be too foolish. He will then offer them to the Governments, who will also refuse to receive them, and tell him to stick to his bargain and pay up his rent: If he be a man who has invested his all in building, and who has no income from other sources out of which to pay his ground rent, he will be reduced to constantly recurring loss by payment of the rent, and from beggary if the felony is committed, he will therefore, without doubt, choose the alternation left him and abandoning his property to its fate.
If a private landed proprietor had an estate lenanted on long lease by, say, twenty or thirty families who cultivate it for their support, paying their rent regularly, and by the occurrence of some unforeseen circumstance the estate became much less productive than before, so that if the tenants continued, for any length of time to pay the rents they had contracted to pay, the poorest of them must at once be reduced to want, and the richer be soon brought to the same condition, it is probable that he would, as a prudent man, rather allow them to remain on paying rent for his land at its true value, seeing no one else could give him more, ultimately, than drive them by the pressures of want to seek their living in some other place.
The Government, fearful (perhaps groundlessly so) of the permanent reduction of the revenue, refuses to surrendered with any ground, though substantial buildings upon it. Were loss allowed to reach to Government at the will of the Lessee, the vischief,