HEPORT OF THE APPLE AND PEAR CONFERENCE. 99 



deterioration, similar to tlie reasonable ''wear and tear" in a 

 house, on the other, I cannot say. Perhaps some such plan 

 could be adopted in this country. 



The simplest reform, however — and I believe that fruit 

 growers and farmers can get it if they will but act together — 

 would be that of striking out the stipulation in the Agricultural 

 Holdings Act which requires the landlord's consent to entitle the 

 tenant to compensation for planting fruit trees and for other 

 permanent improvements. But as I have always been a friend 

 — an unappreciated friend — to landlords, I must state one objec- 

 tion to this proposal. It would be hard to come down upon a 

 poor, embarrassed landlord, or upon one fairly well-to-do, but 

 only a tenant for life, for £20 an acre or more on 100 or 200 

 acres, in the form of compensation to an outgoing tenant. 

 Therefore, it seems to me that if the tenant is to be entitled to 

 compensation for costly improvements made without his land- 

 lord's consent, the latter should have the option of presenting 

 the right of free sale to the former. Or, perhaps, as landlords 

 have always opposed free sale, it will be but a fitting lesson to 

 them to make the amendment in the Agricultural Holdings Act 

 just suggested, and to leave them to sue for free sale, which, I 

 fancy, under the altered circumstances, many of them would 

 very quickly demand. At any rate, in one way or another, I 

 contend it is the right and the duty of the public to insist that 

 the law of the land shall be so altered as to encourage instead of 

 hindering the greatest profitable development of the resources 

 of the soil. They should not recognise the right of a man who 

 is allowed to " hold an estate in land " — the nearest approach to 

 absolute ownership recognised by the law of this country — to 

 keep it as a desert waste, or anything like a desert waste, if it 

 will pay for improvement, and there are capitalists able and 

 willing to improve it. Or, to limit the application of this principle 

 of public right and duty to the subject before us, I say that the 

 people of this country, desirous as they are to see planting in- 

 creased, should insist on their representatives in Parliament, 

 without unnecessary delay, so amending or adding to the statutes 

 as to afford to every cultivator of the soil full security for the 

 unexhausted value of any improvement in the planting and 

 culture of fruit which he is able and willing to carry out. 



Discussion. 



Mr. EouPELii pointed out that the owner of land was not 

 always an ogre, and might occasionally be expected to act with 

 both common sense and consideration. Sometimes, however, 

 the ownership vested in trustees, or in the guardians of infants, 

 who had a very real difficulty in going outside the strict letter of 

 the law, it was therefore very advisable that in any alteration 

 of the law. it should be made to act automatically. The best 



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