Later Agrarian Legislation. 461 



provided the landlords with the necessary funds, and insured 

 ultimate repayment within a fixed period, as well as absolute 

 security for the money advanced. Then the repeal of the Corn 

 Laws and the potato famine between them absorbed all the 

 spare cash of the landed capitalist, and the services of the 

 Government again came into requisition. The principle of the 

 Private Drainage Acts of 9 & 10 Vict. c. 101, and 12 & 13 Vict. 

 c. 100,^ was extended, and improvements which hitherto had 

 lieen beyond the means of either landlord or tenant were now 

 with this assistance of the legislature eagerly undertaken. 

 The Settled Estates Acts of 1856, 1858, 1864, 1877, 1882, etc., 

 are in fact a miniature history in themselves of the gradual 

 development of landed property during the last period of our 

 narrative. 



We have seen at the beginning of the century a clamour 

 on the farmers' part for leases, to which the landlords more 

 or less responded as far as they were able. But at first, unless 

 specially empowered by the deed of settlement or will, the 

 tenant-in-tail could not, unless he had recourse to a private 

 Act of Parliament,^ grant a lease to last longer than his own 

 life. By the qualified permission aiforded to the tenant-for- 

 life by 32 Hen. VIII. c. 28, numbers of these contracts for 

 twenty-one years were, as we have shown earlier in this work, 

 in use when Pitt's disastrous Currency Act of 1819, brought 

 the practice into bad odour. Then for a time both landlord 

 and farmer were well content to take their chance under the 

 yearly agreement. In 1833, the legislature made a half- 

 hearted attempt to secure fixity of tenure to the husbandman, 

 and the tenant-in-tail in possession was allowed to make 

 leases for twenty-one years But even then the person who 

 owned the estate for his life only (before the tenant-in-tail) 



' There were besides Pusey's ineffective Public Money Drainage Act of 

 1840, a more workable Act of 1846, the Private Drainage Acts, alluded 

 to in the text, the West of England or South West Land Draining Com- 

 pany's Act (11 & 12 Vict. c. 154) and the General Land Drainage and 

 Improvement Company's Act (16 & 17 Vict. c. 154). 



* Mr. Brodrick states that 700 of these Acts were procured in the early 

 part of this century. Enylifih Land and Landlords, p. 135. 



