On Thursday, when we go to press, the Government are
introducing the Second Reading of their Bill which is intended to clear up the mess that has been made by the sloppy wording of the 1920 Rent Restrictions Act. As we understand it, the Bill would retrospectively deny to tenants the right to recover rent which landlords have illegally, as it now appears, exacted from them. We cannot over-emphasize the danger of this precedent for retrospective legislation. On the other hand, it is obvious that the Labour Party's programme of allowing tenants to recover from the landlords themselves is impracticable, since it would certainly break the already trembling backs of the much harassed landlords and finally warn off those adventurous few who seem willing to invest their money in house property and so get new houses built. After all, the fault was the State's for passing a definitely misleading Act. Is it not reasonable that the State should now, instead of resorting to that tyrannous and fundamentally un-English expedient of retrospectively taking away the legal rights of a whole class, bear the burden of the mistake, and offer to indemnify the tenants from the Exchequer ? Is it not worth the while of the Unionist and Constitutional Party to stand by the sanctity of the law almost at any cost ? Labour will not be slow to point the moral and imitate the example if the Government do not do so. We all recognize the wisdom of the framers of the Constitution of the United States in forbidding by "Article I., Section 9," all ex post facto laws.
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