382 History of the English Landed Interest. 



all the leases of tlie time there were clauses very properly 

 restricting a tenant from injuring or deteriorating the timber 

 and young wood on his holding. In none were there any 

 inducements held out to him to improve it by planting. It 

 was therefore proposed to insert a further clause, allowing him 

 to cut all timber at pleasure for the use of the farm, which 

 had not been specially reserved by the landlord at the outset 

 of the tenancy, but compelling him to leave as valuable a stock 

 of trees as he found on entry ; and further, during the last six 

 years of the tenancy he was to be entitled to sell off or receive 

 an equivalent price for all timber in excess of that, the valua- 

 tion of which was taken at his entry. Then too, in case he 

 might be inclined, having once made up his mind to quit, to 

 deteriorate the land by cross-cropping, or the buildings and 

 fences by neglect to repair, a further clause was suggested, 

 restricting his system of husbandry and sale of produce during 

 the last six years of the lease, and providing for the arbitration 

 of two honest men in order to value the damage sustained by 

 the landlord by his neglect on these heads. 



This proposal was a proper step in the right direction. It 

 was the first recognition of a tenant's rights to unexhausted 

 improvements, but it was hardly just to the landlord's side of 

 the question. It contained, in fact, all the serious objections 

 which still cling to every lease relating to the agricultural 

 tenure of land. The occupier was absolutely secure of re- 

 ceiving his proper dues at the determination of the tenancy, 

 because he had in his hands the best of security for his land- 

 lord's undertaking ; but the latter had literally none, for even 

 the farming stock that he employed (as many a modern land- 

 agent knoAvs by bitter experience) might be some one else's 

 property. 



It would therefore seem that, at the very least, Lord Kaimes 

 should have inserted a power of re-entry as soon as the land- 

 lord failed to receive his rent at the proper periods. This, 

 with his exceptional powers of distraining, might have en- 

 abled him to curtail, if not entirely prevent, a loss which, 

 otherwise, would have swollen year by year into disastrous 

 proportions. 



