MR. PUSEY'S BILL 167 



continuity of good husbandry. And this is all that the 

 Legislature has any right to recognise . 



The first movement in the direction of legislation was in 

 1847, when Mr. Pusey, M.P., introduced a Tenant Right 

 Bill.* He reintroduced it in 1848 and obtained the appoint- 

 ment of a Select Committee " to inquire into the law and 

 custom of different parts of England and Wales, as between 

 outgoing and incoming tenants, and also as between land- 

 lord and tenant, in reference to unexhausted improvements 

 or deterioration of land and premises occupied for agricul- 

 tural purposes." 



This Committee reported in July of the same year, after 

 hearing a great deal of very interesting evidence from most 

 parts of England. After a brief statement on the growth 

 of local custom, they expressed the opinion that improvements 

 which are very generally required throughout the country 

 in order to develop the full powers of the soil are greatly pro- 

 moted by this system of compensation (i.e., under local 

 customs). They did not, however, recommend compulsion, 

 but relied on the general adoption of the system by landlords 

 and tenants. They did recommend that the law with respect 

 to things affixed to the freehold should be amended, and that 

 an outgoing tenant should be permitted to remove what he 

 himself had set up. 



The result of this report was that in 1851 an Act was passed 

 by Lord John Russell which empowered a tenant who, with 

 the landlord's consent in writing, put up farm buildings or 

 machinery at his own cost, to remove them as his own pro- 

 perty, subject to an option on the landlord's part to take 

 them at a valuation. 



Unfortunately the Select Committee gave no tabulated 

 details of local custom, but in 1850 a book on " Agricultural 

 Tenancies " was published by Mr. Wingrove Cooke, who had 

 been engaged for some years on the Tithe Commission, and 

 whose work had taken him into all parts of the country. 

 This was the first publication on the question. 



* Mr. Pusey's Bill twice passed the House of Commons, but was 

 rejected by the House of Lords. 



