And Manners Tend To Raise Rents
And Shorten The Terms Of Leases

What has been said of servants and masters is applicable, to a certain
extent, to landowners and farming tenants; but this subject deserves
to be considered by itself. In America there are, properly speaking, no
tenant farmers; every man owns the ground he tills. It must be admitted
that democratic laws tend greatly to increase the number of landowners,
and to diminish that of farming tenants. Yet what takes place in the
United States is much less attributable to the institutions of the
country than to the country itself. In America land is cheap, and anyone
may easily become a landowner; its returns are small, and its produce
cannot well be divided between a landowner and a farmer. America
therefore stands alone in this as well as in many other respects, and it
would be a mistake to take it as an example.

I believe that in democratic as well as in aristocratic countries there
will be landowners and tenants, but the connection existing between them
will be of a different kind. In aristocracies the hire of a farm is paid
to the landlord, not only in rent, but in respect, regard, and duty;
in democracies the whole is paid in cash. When estates are divided and
passed from hand to hand, and the permanent connection which existed
between families and the soil is dissolved, the landowner and the tenant
are only casually brought into contact. They meet for a moment to settle
the conditions of the agreement, and then lose sight of each other; they
are two strangers brought together by a common interest, and who keenly
talk over a matter of business, the sole object of which is to make
money.

In proportion as property is subdivided and wealth distributed over the
country, the community is filled with people whose former opulence is
declining, and with others whose fortunes are of recent growth and whose
wants increase more rapidly than their resources. For all such persons
the smallest pecuniary profit is a matter of importance, and none of
them feel disposed to waive any of their claims, or to lose any portion
of their income. As ranks are intermingled, and as very large as well
as very scanty fortunes become more rare, every day brings the social
condition of the landowner nearer to that of the farmer; the one has not
naturally any uncontested superiority over the other; between two men
who are equal, and not at ease in their circumstances, the contract of
h