The Agricultural Holdings (^England) Act, 1883. 
9 
again. Meanwhile, a sitting tenant enjoys substantial protec- 
tion against any undue rise in rent, by reason of the compensa- 
tion for disturbance to which the landlord at once becomes 
liable if the tenant resists a rise in rent and quits his 
holding. * 
" Determination of tenancy," it may here be convenient to 
explain, means throughout the Act an end put to a tenancy by 
effluxion of time or any other cause (§ 61), such as death or 
bankruptcy. In cases where a tenant has renewed his tenancy 
upon its determination from any cause, his title to compensa- 
tion holds good when he quits his holding, although the 
improvements for which he claims may not have been executed 
during the last expiring tenancy (§ 58). There is an obvious 
justice in securing to such a tenant a continued right to the 
Iruits of his outlay, and this provision very properly removes 
all the technical objections which might otherwise have defeated 
his claim. For the purposes of this section, the two months' 
notice of claim, which must be given to a landlord " before the 
determination of the tenancy " (§ 7), must be read as referring to 
the last-expiring tenancy, and not to that in which the improve- 
ments were actually made. 
We come next in the wording of § 1, to the person liable 
to pay a tenant's compensation. In law, though not in prac- 
tice, this liability rests on the landlord. No one may be 
willing to rent the farm ; in any case, an incoming tenant is 
merely a substitute provided by landlords to meet claims which 
otherwise they would have to satisfy. The landlord's responsi- 
bility fully appears in the Act ; it is not a new responsibility, 
but, seeing the present dearth of tenants, any practical increase 
of it can hardly be viewed by landlords with a light heart. 
As everybody knows, but as a good many people are apt to 
forget, tenant-right has two sides ; and more than justice to the 
outgoing tenant means injustice and crippled resources to the 
incoming tenant. In the new order of things, which seems 
within measurable distance, when landlords will be competing for 
farmers instead of farmers for land, it is easy to imagine a new- 
comer refusing point-blank to have anything to do with the 
outgoing tenant. " I don't believe the improvements are worth 
what the valuers say they are worth ; the sum they fix is out of 
the question. I won't give more than so-and-so. If you want 
me to rent your farm, you must pay out your late tenant, as the 
Act says you must, and take from me what I think fair value 
for his outlay." 
* See the able defence of the Act, already quoted, by Mr. Sbaw-Lefevre, who 
had charge of the Bill in the House of Commons. 
