Agrarian Tenures. 
863 
have been usually granted by landlords to the labourers, and not 
acquired by local authorities under the powers conferred upon them 
by the Act. 
After dealing with land legislation in England and Wales, he 
devotes some chapters to the same subject as it affects Scotland, 
Ireland, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man, and returns in 
Chapters X. and XI. to the consideration of the future of agrarian 
reforms in England. In his conclusions we find much with which 
we are compelled to differ, but we thoroughly agree with him when 
he sums up what has gone before, previously to starting upon his 
’ errand of reform : — 
It will be admitted that these various efforts of Parliament almost 
exhaust the possible methods of legislation, that it will be very difficult to 
discover any new scheme, and that whatever further is done must be in 
the direction of extending, or improving, or making more effective some or 
all of them. 
He is not in favour of an extension of Irish land legislation to 
England, so as to give English farmers fixity of tenure and the right 
of appealing to an independent tribunal for the determination of 
their rents. As he truly says : — 
In England generally it may be asserted that, during the last few years, 
the tenants have not been at the mercy of landlords so far as rent is concerned. 
The landlords have been even more anxious to retain their tenants than the 
tenants have been desirous of remaining on their farms, and have submitted 
to very great reductions and abatements of rent. 
And he recognises the fact that it pays a farmer who has a 
certain amount of capital at his command better to hire a farm and 
devote all his capital to its cultivation, than to sink a portion in the 
purchase of land. 
Mr. Shaw Lefevre’s chief aim in the matter of English land is 
the increase of small ownerships or small tenancies of some kind or 
other, but he recognises the improbability of this taking place to 
any considerable extent under the Small Holdings Act of 1892. To 
show the lack of inducement to the acquisition of a small holding by 
purchase, he takes the case of a thirty-acre farm at an agricultural 
rental of 1Z. an acre. He estimates that the price of this, after the 
erection by the County Council of farm buildings, and other expenses, 
would be 1,120/. Supposing a purchaser comes forward and pays 
down one-fifth of the purchase-money (221/.), by the terms of the 
Act he would still, under the most favourable conditions, have to 
make an annual payment of 34/. for the permanent rent charge, 
representing one-fourth of the purchase money, and the interest on 
and instalments of the remainder spread over a period of fifty years. 
To this annual payment should be added the interest on the 224/. 
already paid, which Mr. Shaw Lefcvre has omitted to take into con- 
sideration, and which, at 4 per cent., would amount to about 9/. a 
year, thus bringing the annual cost of the holding up to 43/., without 
reckoning tithe and land-tax — no inconsiderable amount to pay for 
