THE DEFECTS OF THE ACT 1 55 



and not by the incoming tenant ; in the second place, it 

 secures to the outgoing tenant the full market value of 

 the improvement ; and, in the third place, it sets no 

 time limit whatever on the duration of an improvement, 

 but gives the outgoing tenant an absolute right to get 

 the full remaining unexhausted value of any improve- 

 ment, however long the period since it was carried out, 

 if any remaining value can be shown to exist. It in 

 effect created by statute a property for the tenant in the 

 whole added value his outlay or labour, so far as such 

 outlay was in accordance with the Act, may have con- 

 tributed to the holding. 



The chief defects of the Act were that it provided no 

 machinery to work out this principle effectively and 

 equitably, and that it limited the application of the 

 principle of the Act — the securing of the ownership by 

 the tenant of his own improvements — to one class of 

 tenants only, those who are leaving their farms. 



The result of the first of these defects has been that 

 in the working of the Act, the existing class of valuers 

 have nearly everywhere in practice set aside its principle, 

 and instead of estimating compensation for the whole of 

 the improvements executed on a farm at whatever date, 

 if any remaining value of such improvements can be 

 shown, they have substituted for the principle of the 

 Act time scales of exhaustion for fertilisers and feeding 

 stuffs and other improvements, and have rigorously 

 limited compensation to the expenditure of the tenant 

 in the last two or three, or in the case of some manures, 

 four to six or seven years. Further, they have in general 

 paid no attention whatever to the manner in which such 

 improvements have been carried out, and have simply 

 applied a rule-of-thumb calculation to the actual bills for 

 cake and manure, without considering the quality of the 

 farming. 



Of many evil consequences of this perversion of the 

 principle of the Act, that most frequently and most 

 cogently insisted upon by witnesses is, that the working 

 of the Act has put the bad farmer on a safer footing 

 than the good farmer. It has been established by the 



