144 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



find money for improvements, who otherwise would 

 have no margin with which to execute them. 



This amendment of the law has also been recom- 

 mended by a unanimous resolution of the Central 

 Chamber of Agriculture. Its advantages are incidentally 

 shown by the better position of tenants on Crown and 

 corporate estates, where outlays may more readily be 

 charged to capital instead of paid out of income. 



It is urged that on heavily encumbered estates the 

 tenants have no security, as to retaining the farms, or 

 as to fair treatment. Till the passing of the Tenants 

 Compensation Act in 1890, the claim of a tenant for 

 improvements, or for tillages and crops, as against the 

 landlord, lapsed if the mortgagee took possession, and 

 thus stepped into the landlord's shoes. The Tenants 

 Compensation Act transferred to the foreclosing mort- 

 gagee the landlord's liabilities to his tenants in these 

 respects. 



But on encumbered estates there is a double danger. 

 The narrow margin tempts, or even compels, owner and 

 agent to be unjust; and if the farm passes to the mort- 

 gagee, still less consideration is to be expected. In the 

 latter case the sitting tenants have no chance. If they 

 have improved their farms and kept them in high 

 condition, the fullest competition value is exacted from 

 them, or they are turned out to make a higher rent to be 

 got from others. The usual history of heavily encum- 

 bered estates, whose values have been fictitiously 

 written up by the lawyers as a basis for heavy charging 

 of this created value, is rack-renting till the sitting tenant 

 breaks or leaves, and then reletting at enormous reduc- 

 tions, when the land has inevitably gone down. 



It must be recognised that even on estates whose 

 encumbrances seemed moderate a few years back, the 

 margin has probably in many cases become insufficient 

 to meet in full and fair proportion the reasonable claims 

 of tenants to a fair working rent and adequate equip- 

 ment, and that on the most heavily burdened estates 

 the position has, as we have shown, become quite 

 hopeless. This state of affairs, where it exists, is 



