OBJECTIONS. 105 



Tenuke and Improvements. 



Other siiggestious wliich liave been made are 

 that a farming tenant should have fixity of 

 tenure, free sale of his improvements, and that 

 there should be rents judicially fixed by a Land 

 Court. The suggestions have been pretty con- 

 stantly before the public for more years than we 

 care to remember, but we may certainly add that 

 the most impartial and practical farmers and 

 others whom we have come across, have in the 

 main certainly not asked for " judicial " rents, 

 whilst as regards fixity of tenure some of the 

 most strenuous advocates of this have come to 

 urge that it is not required where free sale of 

 a tenant's improvements are allowed to such 

 tenant. The Royal Commission on Agriculture 

 came to the conclusion that not one of the three 

 propositions was desirable in the interests of 

 agriculture. 



With regard, however, to the free sale of im- 

 provements which is perhaps the most important 

 of the three items, matters have been consider- 

 ably ameliorated by the passing of the Agricul- 

 tural Holdings Act, 1900, and there is no reason 

 to suppose that with further pressure, agricul- 

 turists would not secure a further amendment of 

 this Act should they generally desire it. No such 

 amendment, however, could by any stretch of 

 reasoning enable farmers to compete with the 

 foreigner under our present absurd fiscal con- 

 ditions. 



