Legislative Action 139 



comments Mr Jesse Collings, "but it is absolutely impossible to carry 

 it into law. The question is full of complications. A farmer may be 

 a man of good judgment or bad, and to enact that he should receive 

 compensation on leaving his farm for all that he has done, without 

 the consent of his landlord, in the way of what he considers to be 

 improvement, would lead to difficulties, and certainly to litigation. 

 Some of the outlay he had made might be considered by an incoming 

 tenant, as well as by the landlord, as useless or of small value. Other 

 work, such as the planting of orchards, etc., would require some years 

 to show whether or not it was worth paying for at all 1 ." It must be 

 remembered, however, in reading Mr Ceilings' comments, that to him, 

 as a champion of small ownership, the present failure to satisfy the 

 claimants of tenants' right is a useful weapon for attack upon the 

 whole system of tenancy. Things are not quite so bad as he sees 

 them. But still it is obvious that this question of compensation does 

 offer peculiar difficulties in the case of small holdings. For the 

 small farmer is probably a poor man, to whom every shilling sunk 

 in his land represents much more than it does to the well-to-do large 

 farmer; it is generally recognised that he improves the land, by his 

 more intensive methods, much more than the large farmer does ; 

 while on the other hand, being as a rule a man of comparatively 

 little education, he is hardly in a position to realise and enforce his 

 rights. If it is attempted to give him protection by means of special 

 legislation, as in the case of the Market Gardeners' Compensation 

 Act, a danger arises that the landlord will be still less inclined to 

 create such holdings, for fear of having to pay down large sums in 

 compensation to his tenants at the end of their lease. This tendency is 

 aggravated when, as in the particular Act cited, such compensation has 

 to be paid for improvements undertaken without the landlord's consent. 

 The difficulty of the question, however, is considerably mitigated 

 when a mediating body, namely the local authority, intervenes 

 between the landlord and the tenant. For it is to be supposed that 

 the Council, upon which will fall the duty of compensating the small 

 farmer on his giving up his holding, will recognise his just claims 

 more readily than would the landowner himself; and that the tenant 

 will find it easier to get those claims settled than if he himself had to 

 treat with his landlord. It is specially important to note that the 

 Act of 1907 enacts that the provisions of the Market Gardeners' 

 Compensation Act shall be applied to all small holdings created by 

 local authorities, so that their tenants can demand compensation for 



1 Ceilings, loc. cit. 



