204 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



reason inoperative. I therefore recommend that as to 

 all improvements in the new schedule, the tenant should 

 be perfectly free to carry them out, but that he should 

 give notice to his landlord of his intention to do so. 

 This would enable the tenant to carry out the improve- 

 ments himself, without the delay and complication of the 

 drainage procedure, if he chose to do so, while it would 

 lead in general to a prompt and satisfactory agreement 

 as to the improvements being carried out by the landlord, 

 and would enable the landlord to take prompt steps to 

 protect himself, in case the tenant proposed to erect un- 

 suitable buildings, or make undesirable changes of culti- 

 vation. 



Clause 2 of the Agricultural Holdings Bill, 1897, and 

 the Schedule to that Bill have been drawn to give effect 

 to this recommendation. 



Retrospective Compensation for suitable 

 Improvements. 



Furthermore, the important principle sanctioned by 

 Parliament in the Market Gardeners' Compensation Act, 

 1895, that a tenant who had, previous to the passing of 

 that Act, carried out on a holding in use as a market 

 garden, improvements for which that Act gave com- 

 pensation, should be compensated, might be extended 

 with excellent effects to ordinary farms. Mr Rowlandson 

 and several other witnesses have stated to us that they 

 have carried out important and costly improvements on 

 their farms, relying wholly on the honour and good 

 faith of their landlords, and without, of course, any 

 legal security whatever. 



In the event of a reference under the Act, I think it 

 highly desirable that the arbitrator should have power to 

 determine whether any such improvement was suitable 

 to the purposes for which the farm was let, and therefore 

 an improvement which might be assumed to have been 

 contemplated in the letting of the farm, and that, in the 

 event of the arbitrator deciding that the improvement 



