CHAPTER XIII. 



Legislative Proposals, 



It will be convenient to sum up concisely the proposals 

 that have been laid before Parliament, to meet the many 

 points that have been fully discussed in the two preceding 

 chapters. 



Omitting earlier proposals, and confining this summary 

 to Bills brought in since the beginning of the great 

 depression, it is interesting to note that the first practical 

 suggestion of value came from that veteran agriculturist, 

 Sir Thomas Acland, in an admirably simple Bill in 1881. 



Sir Thomas Acland's Bill affirmed, for the first time, 

 that the measure of compensation must be the value 

 to the incoming tenant — the principle of the Farmers' 

 Alliance and of the Act of 1883. He proposed that 

 compensation should be assessed by and recovered in 

 the county court, except when the parties agreed to 

 arbitration. Such a Bill would have obviously created 

 cheaper and more effective machinery than the com- 

 plicated Act of 1883. 



The Farmers' Alliance Bill of 1882, to which Mr 

 Bear alluded in his evidence, proposed to create a 

 county committee representing owners and occupiers, 

 from which assessors should be chosen for the county 

 court. The Bill gave a choice between free sale of 

 improvements by the outgoing tenant and a reference to 

 the county court with these assessors. 



In a subsequent Bill, introduced by Mr Howard in 

 1883, provision was made for the fixing of fair rents by 

 the court, constituted as in the Bill of 1882, and the 

 term for which they were to run was fixed at seven 

 years. 



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