444 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



same time to leave him at the mercy of the individual 

 who owns his house to punish him in a most cruel manner 

 for using the privileges thus granted him, is surely the 

 height of unreason and injustice. It is giving a stone in 

 place of bread ; the shadow rather than the substance of 

 political enfranchisement. 



There is, however, a very simple and effectual way of 

 rendering tenants secure, and that is, by a short Act of 

 Parliament declaring all evictions, or seizure of household 

 goods, other than for non-payment of rent, to be illegal. And 

 to prevent the landlord from driving away a tenant by rais- 

 ing his rent to an impossible amount, all alterations of rent 

 must be approved of as reasonable by a committee of the 

 Parish or District Council, and be determined on the appli- 

 cation of either the tenant or the landlord. Of course, at 

 the first letting of a house the landlord could ask what rent 

 he pleased, and if it was exorbitant he would get no tenant. 

 But having once let it, the tenant should be secure as 

 long as he wished to occupy it, and the rent should not 

 be raised except as allowed by some competent tribunal. 

 No doubt a claim will be made on behalf of the landlords 

 for a compulsory, not voluntary, tenancy on the part of 

 the tenant ; that is, that if the tenant has security of 

 occupation, the landlord should have equal security of 

 having a tenant. But the two cases are totally different. 

 Eviction from his home may be, and often is, ruinous loss 

 and misery to the tenant, who is therefore, to avoid such 

 loss, often compelled to submit to the landlord's will. 

 But who ever heard of a tenant, by the threat of giving 

 notice to quit, compelling his landlord to vote against his 

 conscience, or to go to chapel instead of to church ? The 

 tenant needs protection, the landlord does not. 



The same result might perhaps be gained by giving the 

 Parish and District Councils power to take over all houses 

 whose tenants are threatened with eviction, or with an 

 unfair increase of rent ; but this would involve so many 

 complications and would so burthen these Councils with 

 new and responsible work, that there is no chance of its 

 being enacted for many years. But the plan of giving a 

 legal permanent tenure to every tenant is so simple, so 



