58 The Agricultural Holdings {England) Act, 1883. 
trained may be sold, in whole or in part, before tbe fifteen days 
expire. This can only be done, however, with the tenant's 
written consent. 
It is seldom that a Committee's report proves so fruitful in 
legislation ; both landlords and tenants have reason to be 
grateful to the Select Committee of 1882 for the thoroughness 
of their inquiry, and the practical recommendations which have 
modified what was in some respects a harsh law, and brought it 
into harmony with public opinion without any sacrifice of prin- 
ciple. Whether tenants will benefit on the whole by diminishing 
the landlord's security for his rent is a question which experience 
alone will settle. Other parts of the Act suggest the same 
problem. That it will make tenants more independent, and 
place their relations with landlords on a more strictly com- 
mercial basis than heretofore, is a result which was certainly 
inevitable, and may perhaps in the long run prove beneficial in 
promoting the cultivation of the soil. It must make landlords 
even more careful than they now are in letting their farms, for 
the Act gives opportunities of which unscrupulous tenants may 
avail themselves to give much trouble, and put landlords to 
much expense in resisting unfounded claims. Fortunately, 
neither tenants nor landlords as a class come within this 
category ; there is in both a fund of right feeling, of good 
sense, and mutual forbearance, which may be reckoned on with 
confidence in the new relations which the Act of 1883 will 
develop. 
Though in principle it is hard to justify retrospective legisla- 
tion in favour of a class, and though in this respect and in its 
interference with the law of contract the Act may set, I fear, 
a bad example and precedent, still its practical results will not 
be formidable in either direction. Some time must pass before 
the new difficulties in valuing tenant-right are overcome, and 
a fair basis of value established, though these difficulties have 
been exaggerated. Doubtful points in the statute will also have 
to be construed, and its practical working cannot all at once be 
understood. INIean while its immediate effect must be to pro- 
mote agreements which fairly carrv out the spirit of the Act. 
It is impossible, of course, to predict what the ingenuity of 
draftsmen may by-and-by accomplish in evading obligations 
which Parliament has sought to impose. I do not agree with 
the commentators who think they have already discovered the 
necessary loopholes in the Act, and that it will not be hard 
for landowners to contract themselves out of it. I am sure, too, 
that this will not be the spirit by which landlords will generally 
be guided in acting under its provisions. Agreements adapted 
to the special circumstances of various estates and holdings 
