( 129 ) 
HI, — The Agricultural Holdings {England) Act, 1875. By 
Frederick Clifford, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at- 
Lavv. 
Summary of Coktents. 
Introduction 129 
General Application of the Act 133 
■Subjects of Compensation .. .. 139 
General Conditions affecting 
Landlord and Tenant .. .. 151 
Procedure 153 
Charge of Tenant's Compensation 167 
Crown and Duchy Lands .. .. 170 
Ecclesiastical and Charity Lands J 71 
Notice to Quit 172 
Eesumption for Improvements 173 
Fixtures 175 
Appesdix. 
The Asiricultural Holdings (Eng- 
land) Act, 1875 181 
Introduction. 
The object of this Paper is not to discuss the policy of the 
Agricultural Holdings Act, nor yet to criticise its shortcomings 
from the point of view of landlord or tenant, but to give such 
an explanation of its provisions as will be intelligible to those 
whom it so intimately concerns. On the whole, considering the 
number of amendments made in the original Bill, and the late 
period of the Session to which the discussions in Committee 
were protracted, the Act bears fewer marks of haste and cobbled 
legislation than might have been expected. Its leading prin- 
ciples are well defined ; and though the language of particular 
sections is not always free from doubt, the Act, considered from 
the draughtsman's point of view, is an extremely creditable piece 
of workmanship. However small, too, may be its immediate 
effect upon the relations of landlord and tenant, through its 
permissive character, no lawyer can undervalue an Act of Parlia- 
ment which reverses a presumption of law in existence for 
centuries past, and reverses it apparently in favour of the 
husbandman and against the lord, but really in the interest of 
both these classes. 
The law is said to be the perfection of common sense. It is 
also, or should be, the perfection of justice ; and this perfection 
is not fixed, absolute, and unchangeable, but must vary with 
custom, and be fashioned from time to time according to the 
altered circumstances of society ; otherwise, the legal perfection 
of one age may be the imperfection of the next. Thus when 
husbandry was rude, and as an art could hardly be said to exist, 
there was no great hardship in a rule * which secured to the 
husbandman, with certain limitations, the crops of the year, but 
gave him no farther rights in the soil. The year's crops would 
represent pretty accurately the return to which he was entitled 
The rule as to Emblements. 
VOL. XII. — S. S. 
