Hie Agricultural Holdings (^England) Act, 1883. 53 
Limitation of Distress in respect of Amount and Time. — Accord- 
ingly, § 44 prohibits any landlord after January 1, 1884, from 
distraining under § 54, on any holding to which the Act ap- 
plies, for rent due more than one year before the distress is made. 
There is an exception in the case of back rents due on hold- 
ings which were let on January 1, 1884 ; arrears of rent will be 
recoverable by distress on these holdings up to January 1, 1885, 
to the same extent as if this Act had not passed. Another 
exception applies to the numerous cases in which landlords 
allow their tenants to defer payment of rent for a quarter or 
half-year after it is properly due. Clearly, landlords ought 
not to suffer by continuing this privilege, and, on the other 
hand, tenants would think it hard to be deprived of this 
privilege by a law passed in their interests. This quarter or 
half-year of grace will not, therefore, count in limiting the land- 
lord's right of distraint ; the year's rent, for purposes of distraint, 
will be deemed to have become due at the expiration of such 
quarter or half-year, and not at the date at which it legally 
became due. 
Current tenancies, it will be seen, come under the operation 
of § 44, before the Act, as a whole, takes full effect with 
respect to them. The section also applies to leases as well as 
tenancies from year to year. Landlords have the present year 
in which to recover arrears of rent by distress upon tenancies 
current on January 1, 1884. Afterwards, in all cases, their 
preferential right over other creditors will be limited to a year's 
rent, for which, save in the excepted cases, they must distrain 
within the year. For arrears beyond the one year's rent, they 
will rank with other creditors, and must recover by ordinary' 
course of law. 
Limitation of Distress in respect of Things lo be distrained 
(§ 45). — Certain incidents in the law of distress, allowing the 
seizure of agisted stock, have long been felt to be harsh and 
unreasonable ; and there have been cases in which this right has 
been rigidly exercised by landlords. Not only did the right to 
distrain extend to cattle taken by the tenant on tack ; it included, 
under certain circumstances, a stranger's cattle trespassing upon 
the holding by their owner's negligence, or (according to an old 
decision) cattle straying there through insufficient fences on the 
holding, if they had continued there for a night and a day, with 
notice meanwhile to the owner.* Many attempts have been 
made to alter the law, with a view to exempt agisted stock from 
distress, and in 1881 Mr. Chaplin introduced a Bill with this 
object, which passed through Committee, but did not become law. 
* Poulc V. Longueville, 2 Faunders, 289. 
