144 UNEXHAUSTED IMPROVEMENTS. 



expenses. By making the farmer liable for a share of 

 the rate, you are assisted by his personal knowledge in 

 detecting the deceptive statements of claimants for 

 relief, while you make him feel the pressure, which he 

 himself causes by unwisely dismissing his labourers 

 during a temporary " dulness of times." 



A measure which should secure payment to outgoing 

 tenants for unexhausted improvements, would greatly 

 encourage the expenditure of capital by farmers, and 

 their active co-operation with the landlord in all 

 improvements. I do not allude to such a " tenant 

 right " as is sometimes claimed, where very often no 

 improvement whatever has been made by the occupying 

 tenant, and yet he conceives himself entitled to a right 

 of property, which he has never contributed anything 

 to create ; but to that custom which has arisen in 

 Lincolnshire, and some other English counties, of pay- 

 ing a tenant for such improvements as can be ascer- 

 tained to be left by him in the land when he quits the 

 farm, thus encouraging the most perfect husbandry to 

 the very close of each man's period of occupation. In 

 regard to improvements of a permanent character, I 

 think it is a better system, as I will have occasion 

 afterwards to show, that these should be wholly pro- 

 vided by the landlord. 



For these it might be advisable to extend the Land 

 Improvement Act, so as to include farm-buildings, with 

 such restrictions as should guard against extravagant 

 outlay, or indeed any outlay unless it could be clearly 

 shown that other active operations in husbandry were 

 to be followed out. Without that, such expenditure 



