244 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



freedom of sale. If land courts were adopted, agree- 

 ments as to rents would probably be registered in the 

 court, so that no revision could take place, after the 

 contract began, till a reasonable period. Existing 

 leases would have to be set aside, if the five years' 

 system were adopted. 



Professor Sheldon, like Mr Bear, is an advocate of 

 free sale ; fixity of tenure and fair rents are hardly, in 

 his opinion, required if tenants had security to obtain 

 the full value of their improvements when they left, and 

 this they can best have by free sale. He would limit 

 free sale to improvements only. 



He admits that there are diflFiculties in this proposal, 

 both as regards reserving to landlords their right of 

 pre-emption and choice of a new tenant, and as regards 

 the detachment of the increase of value of land due to 

 improvements and to other causes. 



Free sale of improvements is obviously open to 

 several objections. In the first place, it will not work in 

 bad times, and throws you back on a system of valuation. 

 Without valuation, an outgoing tenant, when things are 

 at their worst, would get nothing, and would be ruined. 

 In the second place, you have to guarantee the purchaser 

 that he shall have the same rent as the seller, or at any 

 rate that he shall know beforehand at what rent he shall 

 enjoy the holding. But if the transfer is made during 

 the course of a five years' term, unless there is at the 

 same time a reference to the court to fix a judicial rent 

 for another five years, the new tenant cannot be sure at 

 what rent he will sit, and, under Mr Smith's Bill and 

 similar Bills, he must necessarily wait till the end of the 

 term to know exactly how the court will decide. In the 

 meantime some sudden change of prices, or the condition 

 of agriculture, may materially alter the decision antici- 

 pated by the purchaser at the time he enters into his 

 bargain. The whole transaction is therefore speculativ^e, 

 and does not rest, as an improved system of valuation 

 would rest, on an exact appraisement at the moment of 

 the remaining value of the improvements of the outgoing 

 tenant. 



