AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS ACTS 299 



attention of the farmer they withdraw him from slower and 

 more certain sources of wealth, and encourage him to rely 

 too much upon chance for his rent, rather than the honest 

 labour of the plough. To the landlord the cultivation of hops 

 is an evil, defrauding the arable land of its proper quantity 

 of manure and thereby impoverishing his estate.' 



It was by this time the general opinion of men with 

 a thorough experience of farming, that in many parts of 

 Great Britain no sufficient compensation was secured to the 

 tenant for his unexhausted improvements. In some counties 

 and districts this compensation was given by established 

 customs, in others customs existed which were insufficient, 

 in many they did not exist at all. It must be confessed that 

 often when a tenant leaves his farm there is more compensa- 

 tion due to the landlord than to the tenant. Human nature 

 being what it is, the temptation to get as much out of the 

 land just before leaving it is wellnigh irresistible to many 

 farmers. 



In these days, when the landlord is often called upon by the 

 tenant to do what the tenant used to do himself, the question 

 of compensation to the tenant must on many estates appear to 

 the landlord extremely ironical. It is, in the greater number 

 of cases, the landlord who should receive compensation, and 

 not the tenant ; and though he has power to demand it, such 

 power is over and over again not put in force. 



At the same time there are bad men in the landlord class 

 as in any other, and from them the tenant required protection. 

 By the Agricultural Holdings (England) Act of 1875, 38 & 39 

 Vict. c. 92, improvements for which compensation could be 

 claimed by the tenant were divided into three classes. First 

 class improvements, such as drainage of land, erection or 

 enlargement of buildings, laying down of permanent pasture, 

 &€., required the previous consent in writing of the landlord 

 to entitle the tenant to compensation. Second class improve- 

 ments, such as boning of land with undissolved bones, chalking, 



