ted from father to son for many generations, and are considered to
be perpetual leases. The landlord cannot expel a tenant except for
non-payment of rent during three consecutive years. In actual fact, the
right of the _emfiteuta_ in the soil is far more important than that of
the landlord; for the tenant can cheat his landlord as much as he
pleases, whereas the injustice of the law provides that under no
circumstances whatsoever shall the landlord cheat the tenant. In actual
fact, also, the rents are universally paid in kind, and the peasant eats
what remains of the produce, so that very little cash is seen in the
land.

Corona discovered that the income she enjoyed from the lands of
Astrardente was collected by the basketful from the threshing-floors, and
by the barrel from the vineyards of some two hundred tenants. It was a
serious matter to gather from two hundred threshing-floors precisely a
quarter of the grain threshed, and from fifty or sixty vineyards
precisely a quarter of the wine made in each. The peasants all made their
wine at the same time, and all threshed their grain in the same week. If
the agent was not on the spot during the threshing and the vintage, the
peasant had no difficulty whatever in hiding a large quantity of his
produce. As the rent was never fixed, but depended solely on the yield of
the year, it was preeminently to the advantage of the tenant to throw
dust in the eyes of the landlord whenever he got a chance. The landlord
found the business of watching his tenants tedious and unprofitable, and
naturally resorted to the crowning evil of agricultural evils--the
employment of a rent-farmer. The latter, at all events, was willing to
pay a fixed sum yearly; and if the sum paid was generally considerably
below the real value of the rents, the arrangement at least assured a
fixed income to the landlord, with the certainty of getting it without
trouble to himself. The middleman then proceeded to grind the tenants at
his leisure and discretion in order to make the best of his bargain. The
result was, that while the tenant starved and the landlord got less than
his due in consideration of being saved from annoyance, the middleman
gradually accumulated money.

Upon this system nine-tenths of the land in the Pontifical States was
held, and much of the same land is so held to-day, in spite of the modern
tenant-law, for reasons which will be clearly explained in another part
of this history. Corona s