THE DUKE OF ARGYLL ON TENANT-RIGHT.
rtDuke of Argyll is ill at ease upon the subject of mpensation to dispossessed farmers for their unexhausted improvements. It is a subject in regard to which he cherishes notions that are very distinct and strong. In the main, they coincide with those hard, narrow, and superficial ideas to which Mr. Lowe has repeatedly given caustic utterance. Like Mr. Lowe, his Grace was able to contain himself during the debates on the Irish Land Act, finding a justification, no doubt, in what he deemed the exceptional nature of the case. But when the Agricultural Holdings Act of last year came under consideration in the House of Peers, he spoke out against it in a characteristically energetic and peremptory style.. Now that we are promised such an extension of the law as will make it suitable for Scotland, the prospect of having the obnoxious arrangement brought to his own doors has roused him still further, and he has been moved to anticipate the Parliamentary discussion by contributing a paper to the current number of the Contemporary Review, in which he restates his objections. That the statement is made with great vigour and lucidity need hardly be said, though we must also say that we do not rate the article as an extremely favourable specimen of its author's dialectic skill. His argument is laid out with a great appearance of orderliness and method, but its substance escapes from the prescribed lines, and straggles more than once into contradiction. His clean-cut sentences follow each other in what at first seems to be natural and effective sequence, but when the composition is grasped as a whole it shows as nerve- less and confused. The position of the Duke is that any legislation to debar a landlord from confiscating, on the lapse of a tenancy, the un- exhausted values which the tenant may have put into the soil, or upon it, is unnecessary, and must prove vain. He exalts to the authority of an economic maxim the principle that the management of private property is best left to be regu- lated by private agreement, and adhering stiffly to that, he condemns in limine the proposal under review. More- over, not content with branding it as heretical, when judged by the strict law of political economy, he likewise denounces it as•revolutionary, seeing that it goes to upset what he counts a wholesome arrangement, under which all that is sought for is obtained, in so far as it is obtainable, and to sub- stitute an imperative rule, the attempted application of which must produce endless difficulties, disappointments, and injustice. We think him wrong in both respects, the economical not less than the practical. Apart from the blunder involved in treat- ing the science of political economy too much as if it were an art, in crediting its laws with an absoluteness that does not really belong to them, he offends against the very law he invokes. His point is that the relation of landlord and tenant being pro- perly one of contract, the State should take no cognisance of it, unless to enforce the bargain that has been concluded. But why should the State interfere to that effect, unless to pro- mote confidence, to protect industry, to encourage thrift, invention, and improvement, by its vindication of the right I It thus affords to the bargain-makers that security which is indispensable. This is universally ac- knowledged to be one of its proper functions. If, however, the bargain be so framed as to deny security to one side, and at the same time to shut out State intervention, then the very reason that justifies interference in ordinary cases should avail to prompt the overruling of such a contract, and the prescrip- tion of fairer conditions. Especially is this the case in a question between such persons as the owner and the occupier of tillage land, where the claims of the owner can only be sustained to the prejudice of the rights belonging to the occupant. For it must be remembered that property in land stands upon a different footing from property of every other description, and that the idea of it favoured by the Duke of Argyll is apt in its development to come into conflict with the _idea which the cultivator is irresistibly led to adopt. The Duke does not say that the cultivator has no proprietary right in the added value which his capital and labour have given to the soil, but he contends that it is trivial, fleeting, and accessory, incapable of express measurement, unworthy of express protection, and well enough provided for by a haphazard arrangement, which either leaves the occupant to a certain extent at the mercy of the owner, or tempts him to save himself by a sluggish and perfunctory style of farming. The occupant, on the other hand, alleges that, having paid the hire of the land, the improvements he has made upon it, either by the reclamation of waste or by the enhanced fertility of what is under the plough, are really his, till he has been adequately remunerated for them ; that the manures he has sunk in the soil belong to him as distinctly as the manures he has stored in his farmyard, that their worth can quite readily be determined at any time, and that to deprive him of them without compensation is downright pillage.
Leaving aside, meanwhile, the inquiry whether their value can be calculated and how, there can be little difficulty in deciding which of these representations is more directly implicated with the elementary ideas of justice, coincides most newly with those universal motives that govern human progress, and seeing that truth is ever consistent, harmonises best with scientific teach- ing. Really, after all the discussions of late years, it is well- nigh time that the scientific objections which the Duke parades anew should be consigned to the appropriate limbo of economic sophisms. Is his appeal to practical considerations more satisfactory I Ere introducing it, he beats about the bush a good deal, hunting down sundry irrelevancies. Thus, he contends that land is incorrectly described as a monopoly, because there are always parcels of it for sale, oblivious of the fact that the term is employed because of the limitation in its quantity, not at all as implying an absolute arrestment of transfer. Again, he argues that farming must pay well, and that the security of the farmer is shown to be above the average of other traders, else why the keen competition for every vacant hold- ing,—the answer being that there is no vocation which tempts so many novices, and that the easy and pleasant life countervails a great many disadvantages, which it is, nevertheless, most desirable to get rid of. The pith of
his reasoning, however, consists in an attempted demonstra- tion that it is impossible to do precisely what is asked, and that if the effort is made, it will recoil upon those making it by the destruction of a system under which they are tolerably well off, and enjoy in large measure the protection of which they are solicitous. In other words, he maintains that improve- ments are so diversified in their nature, and in the conditions under which they are carried through, that no appraisement of their endurance and value can be made ; while the Scottish system of leases, with its concomitants of landlord liberality and preference for old tenants, effectually precludes any reasonable complaint. On the first point, taken as he puts it, we are rather inclined to agree with him. The expedient, in favour with Mr. Howard, Mr. Read, and the English Chamber of Agriculture, of prescribing a certain series of years as a scale for computing in all circumstances the value of improve- ments belonging to a certain category, cannot but prove misleading. The differences of soil and climate which exist require corresponding differences of treatment. In some cases drainage will be easy, while in others it will prove laborious. Manures vary in their qualities and in their fitness for particular purposes, while they may be applied sparingly or lavishly. These and numberless considerations of a like sort give force to the Duke's complaint against the pro- portional rules for estimating the rate at which improvements are exhausted. It does not seem to have struck him that there is another and wholly unobjectionable mode. An arbitrary principle must fail of applicability in many cases, but a couple of skilled valuers, inspecting the land, empowered to hear evidence, and having before them a vouched statement of ex- penditure, might be relied on to come very near an accurate conclusion. Moreover, the Duke, while inveighing against the plan he dislikes, is blind to the manner in which his condem- nation militates against the plan he approves. If a scale of years chosen upon the principle of an average be untrustworthy, with what face can he insist that a lease, the duration of which may vary indefinitely, while it is determined by considerations that are unrelated to this matter, should be accepted as sufficient ? That it is sufficient, a growing number of Scottish farmers, comprising the men who are most distinguished by enterprise and independence, strenuously dispute. They must know full well where the shoe pinches ; and recent experiences which have acquired considerable notoriety, while serving to show that the outcry they have raised is not causeless, completely dissipate the Arcadian picture which the Duke has drawn. He writes of farms let on a nineteen years' lease at less than their market value per acre, the reduction being conceded out of favour to old tenants, who are thus supplied with the means for improvement, and are preserved from any temptation to impoverish or neglect the land during the latter years of their guaranteed possession. It is asked in amazement where these paragons of landlords are to be found. Their existence is certainly not generally known. The common rule is widely different from that described. Adam Smith notes that, in his day, the disposition of the landed proprietor was to leave the tenant no more than the smallest share with which he could content himself. In so far as things have changed since then, it has not been in the direction of greater liberality. The mercantile spirit has more and more asserted itself, till it is now dominant. There are few estates in the management of which it has not full sway. When a farm falls out of lease, it is advertised, offers are invited from all and sundry, and a species of auction is held, the highest offerer being almost invariably preferred, if he can show that he has sufficient com- mand of capital to make a fair start. Thus it happens that if the old tenant has done his duty by the land up till the expiry of his term, and gets a renewal, it is upon conditions that in- volve an annual rent-charge upon the capital he has himself sunk. If a new corner is preferred, it is because his offer includes a payment equivalent to the enhanced value accruing from his predecessor's operations. In either case, the landlord, in reclaiming his own at the end of the lease, seizes also upon what is another's, and in addition to obtaining the natural Increase of income to which ownership entitles him, enriches himself at the cost of another's toil and outlay. This is the system against which a determined hostility has been aroused in Scotland, stronger even than that prevalent in England against the analogous evil which there exists. It has been condemned by the most competent authorities, as restrictive to an unsuspected degree of enterprise and production. And its amendment will not be long deferred,—not even by such clever, impassioned, and inconclusive reasonings as those put forward by the Duke of Argyll.
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