TENANT-FARMERS AND TENANT-RIGHT 401 



case. At the earlier period they were masters of the situation. The 

 land was begging for them, not they for the land. They had a 

 large choice of holdings, and on their own terms. But mastery of a 

 half-bankrupt situation was worth little. To-day, though the 

 demand for farms exceeds the supply, they are better off. In the 

 general conduct of their business, the old difficulties continue ; some 

 have even increased in seriousness. The pressure of foreign com- 

 petition, for example, shows no sign of slackening ; labour has 

 deteriorated in quality ; boys are hard to find ; railway rates require 

 revision ; local taxation, which embraces such imperial objects as 

 education, police, and main roads, has risen so greatly that it 

 has already neutralised the advantages of the concession of partial 

 exemption. But worse in its effects than these known evils is the 

 uncertainty of their tenure produced by recent legislation and by 

 the threat of more drastic measures. 



For many years, the most disturbing element in the relations 

 between landlord and tenant was the difficulty of securing to 

 the tenant the unexhausted value of improvements effected by his 

 own capital. The question has been again brought into prominence 

 in an altered form by the attack on the position of landlords. 



As soon as high farming began, tenant-right, in one shape or 

 another, became an absolute necessity. But landlords and the 

 legislature were slow to recognise the need. If tenants were to be 

 encouraged to invest their capital in the land, they must in justice 

 receive some security for their outlay. At law they had no more 

 than the mediaeval farmer who spent nothing on his holding. The 

 law presumed that everything done to, or put into, the soil became 

 the property of the landowner, who by adding to the rent the annual 

 value of the tenant's outlay could appropriate it to his own profit. 

 Exceptions to the legal presumption were established by the growth 

 of customs of the country. But the protection thus afforded varied 

 in amount, and even in its strongest forms was inadequate. It 

 was therefore generally realised that the law must be modified, if 

 not reversed, either by special agreement or by conferring on tenants 

 a statutory right of property in their own improvements. 



The necessary outcome of the changing conditions of modern farm- 

 ing was recognised in 1843, when Lord Portman failed to obtain 

 legal security for a tenant's expenditure of capital on improvements. 

 Philip Pusey in 1847 was equaUy unsuccessful. His Bill was, how- 

 ever, referred to a select Committee of the House of Commons. 



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