The British Government assumes that all the expenditure upon under-drainage will be paid back in fifteen or twenty years at the farthest.

It lends money to the land-owner on this basis; and the land-owner stipulates with his tenant that he shall reimburse him by annual instalments of six or seven per cent.

until the whole cost of the operation is liquidated.

Thus the tenant-farmer is willing to pay six, sometimes seven per cent.

annually, for twenty years, for the increased capacity of production which drainage gives to the farm he cultivates.