2IO AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



But several witnesses have pointed out difficulties 

 which seem to them to make the remedy impracticable. 



Thus, Mr Bowen Jones thinks it might be done where 

 a rise in the rent was proposed, but that it would be 

 very difficult to apply to the other case, much more 

 frequent, when the improving tenant cannot get an 

 adequate reduction of rent. 



Mr Gillespie recognises the injustice, and that it 

 might be desirable to devise some means of allowing a 

 certain percentage from the rent, but thinks it is 

 impracticable. 



But the point most pressed is that the payments 

 which it has become customary for the incoming tenant 

 to make, not only for tillages and sometimes crops, but 

 for manures and cakes, would have to be made by the 

 sitting tenant after the tenancy was renewed, and thus 

 he would be compelled to repay to the landlord what had 

 been awarded to him as outgoing tenant by the arbitrator, 

 and thus at the end he would be where he began, and 

 the whole proceeding would be nugatory, except that if 

 the parties did not agree, there would be the needless 

 cost of a reference.^ 



This is clearly an ingenious fallacy, based upon 

 a practice which several witnesses rightly think in- 

 consistent with the principle of the Act and with 

 justice. 



Mr Nunneley says : " I have always held that these 

 improvements ought to be paid for by the landlord, 

 and not by the incoming tenant. It makes too large an 

 inroad on the incoming tenant's capital, besides which he 

 does pay twice over. A farmer takes a farm at a high 

 rent because of the good condition it is in, and he has 

 to pay a sum to the outgoing tenant for the manures and 

 cakes which have brought it to that condition. I have 

 always contended that the landlord ought to pay for the 

 manures and cakes which have brought the land into 

 that condition." 



The ground for proposing compensation to the sitting 

 tenant is that the rackrent will be charged by the land- 

 1 See Nunneley, 56, 174-56, 209, 



