THE AGRARIAN REFORM OF 1903. 113 



wanted when the landlord, through future revi- 

 sions of rent, might have some share in them. 

 Indeed cases are not uncommon where the tenant 

 has gone further still, and in order to secure 

 himself the largest possible share in the returns 

 of the farm has let the land — the landlord's part 

 of the capital — run to waste before the fixing of 

 a new rent. In cases where a wilful deteriora- 

 tion of the holding has taken place before an 

 application to have a fair rent fixed, the appli- 

 cation can be rejected by the court. But this 

 power is not utilized. On the contrary, deterio- 

 rated farms are rented lower than well-cultivated 

 ones. Two brothers divided a farm into two 

 shares of equal value — the good husbandman 

 got a rent-reduction from the courts of j\ per 

 cent., the bad one got 17^ per cent.^ 



One cannot therefore say that the Land Com- 

 mission has solved the problem of fixing a really 

 fair rent. Properly speaking, it would have had 

 to investigate, in the case of each holding, what 

 part of the total capital was furnished by the 

 landlord and what by the tenant. It would 

 have had to inquire whether the landlord had 

 not already by high rents appropriated a part of 

 the tenant's property, or whether the tenant had 

 not already been compensated by specially low 

 rents for his expenditure of capital. A com- 

 plicated balance must have been struck — a thing 

 impossible, if only for the one reason, that the 



^ Fry Commission, p. 22. 



