LANDLORDS AND TENANTS 



insure to farmers, compensation for properly con- 

 structed, permanent improvements. The idea of 

 enacting a law of this kind was not new in 1850. 

 Two hundred years before, Walter Blith advised 

 that a law be enacted "whereby every landlord 

 should be obliged .... to give him [the tenant] 

 reasonable allowance for his clear improve- 

 ments." 1 The bill of 1850 did not pass, but 

 neither did it die. Again and again similar bills 

 were brought before Parliament, and in 1875 an 

 act was passed, which laid down the conditions 

 for compensating the outgoing tenant, but unfor- 

 tunately no provision was then made to keep the 

 landlords from requiring the tenants to contract 

 themselves out of the right to claim compensation 

 under the law, and while the law was beneficial in 

 that it systematized and brought greater uni- 

 formity into the practise of granting compensa- 

 tion where tenant-right was recognized, it was not 

 generally adopted. The author of the bill, even, 

 asked his tenants to contract themselves out of the 

 benefits of the law which he himself had framed. 

 In 1883, a new bill, the Agricultural Holdings 

 Act, was passed. This Act contained a clause 

 making it illegal for a landlord to contract him- 

 self out of the conditions of the law. The law of 

 1883 with the slight modifications of the Amend- 

 ing Act of 1900, is still in force, and it will be 

 worth while to examine it with considerable care. 



1 Thorald Rogers, Work and Wages, p. 459. 

 313 



