130 The Agricultural Holdings {England) Act, 1875. 
for his industry ; unexhausted improvements would be to him 
words without meaning. As capital and skill, however, came 
to be imported into agriculture, there arose the necessity of afford- 
ing the cultivator of the soil some further protection than that 
which sufficed when labour and seed, with the poor manure of the 
farmyard, were his chief if not his only investment in the soil. 
Then Custom gradually arose, and became an ally of the English 
Law, varying in different counties, and even in different districts 
in the same county, but recognising, though still partially and 
inadequately as a whole, the just rights of the farmer, newly 
created as these were by a more elaborate and artificial system 
of cultivation. 
The growth of these local customs is in itself an interesting 
example of the mode in which custom and law, working together 
in this country, combine to recognise great social changes long 
before their recognition by the Legislature, and to soften in 
practice the application of what has come to be a rigorous and 
inequitable principle of law. " It is somewhat remarkable," 
says one writer,* " that the Lincolnshire custom itself, from 
which the main features of the Act are borrowed, followed and 
did not precede the great agricultural improvements made in 
that county." But in truth, there is nothing remarkable in this 
order of events : cause and effect have borne here their usual 
relation to each other. What is more remarkable is the power 
of adaptation to special circumstances shown by the English 
common law, and the force slowly attained by custom when 
sanctioned by the law, and felt to be in itself just and expedient.f 
It has always been in the power of landlords in Lincolnshire 
and elsewhere to contract themselves out of any local custom, 
just as it is now in the power of landlords anywhere to con- 
tract themselves out of the Agricultural Holdings Act. But 
custom rules, nevertheless ; and though at one time it must have 
been new to English judges, it was engrafted by them in time 
upon the common law. They went even farther ; not only 
enforcing these local customs in agriculture in the absence of 
agreement, but even giving to tenants the benefit of these 
customs in cases where an agreement had been entered into, 
provided the agreement contained nothing inconsistent with the 
custom. 
Under the Common Law of England, agricultural tenants 
have enjoyed from remote antiquity a certain degree of protec- 
* • Qimrtcrly Review," vol. 139, p. 562. 
+ But tho law of clmngo applies with cqnal force to custom as to law. " Cus- 
toms," siiys Lord Ilcunikcr, " arc no longer applicable to many places where they 
exist, and it will bo a boon tliat a good sound rule should bo laid down, having 
all tho force of h gislative enactment. A good measure laid down upon broad 
lines will be prolty <rcnorally followed." — (Speech on Second Keadiug of Agri- 
cultural Holdings Bill, House of Lords, March 12, 1875). 
