On the record
If a tenant is to be no better off for the improvements he makes on an estate, he will not make the improvements.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann explains the disincentive for tenants to improve their property if they do not benefit from it.
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This ruinous system of large farms cultivated by slaves showed its effects in Italy, eighteen hundred years ago, when the Roman empire was at the height of its grandeur.
He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.
This is the reciprocity of slave law.--to be forever liable to be proved guilty, but never able to prove himself innocent; to be subject to all punishments, but, through his own oath, to no protection.
Did the law ever contemplate so cruel and revengeful a proceeding?
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