FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES. 21 



Treatise after treatise has lately been p^^blished, in which the 

 subject of compensation for meliorations has been fully discussed. 

 The jrist of them seems to be the recomition of the rent as an 



o o 



offset to the use of the land, and the duty of the tenant being 

 fulfilled if he returned the land in the condition in which it was 

 at the beginning of his term. But as the law stands, increased 

 value added by the tenant falls at the end of the term, not to 

 him, but to the landlord. Cases, and not solitary ones, can be 

 quoted in which the letting, and correspondingly the selling, 

 value has l)een by the exertions of the tenant increased by 100 

 per cent. Ikit while the tenant — perhaps an over-sanguine im- 

 prover — had got no richer, possibly even poorer, the landlord 

 without outlay or trouble reaps the benefit. Compensation being 

 discounted in the rent market, the danger of the improvement 

 being twice paid for, rents lower than market rate, — the argu- 

 ments adduced against compensation, and some of which are 

 inconsistent with fact, — are no reasons for withholding from a 

 tenant the just reward of the greater industry and skill he has 

 displayed or the greater outlay of capital he has risked. Melior- 

 ations, deterioration, and dilapidation should at the end of every 

 term form the subject of an arbitration, and the balance struck 

 be paid as it indicates to either landlord or tenant. But during 

 the currency the landlord should have a power to compel an arbi- 

 tration as to the state of the holding. Houses and fences should 

 by the landlord be put at the beginning of a lease in a much 

 better state than can be expected to result from the liabilities of 

 the outgoing tenant which are usually assigned to the incoming 

 one. As regards agreement for compensation, it is not generally 

 known that in the present state of the law it could not at the 

 end of a lease be recovered from a purchaser or singular suc- 

 cessor. 



The greater freedom necessary in the way of rotations of crop- 

 ping is now admitted — nay, enjoined — by the most eminent 

 authorities in agriculture, and along with them the writer is con- 

 vinced that the interest of the tenant will keep him from scourg- 

 ing the land. And there is no better mode of dealing with the 

 subject than lea\'ing it to be dealt with by arbitration as in 

 meliorations and deterioration. A schedule restricting the acreage 

 of known crops should be attached to the lease, and those 

 unknown at the time could be dealt with by the arbiters at the 

 end. And even though tlie acreage were restricted, good policy 

 would allow the tenant to enlarge the area, as he would still 

 have to face tlie arbiters if the crops tended to deterioration. In 

 short, arbitration in anytliing beneficial or prejudicial to the 

 holding should draw the line. 



It is needless to observe tliat arbitration should be provided for 

 in every lease, so that any difficulty arising, but more especially 



