The seventh edition of Plain Advice to Landlords and Tenants
contains a useful digest of the Laws relating to Houses and Lodg- ings; but is perhaps more useful as a warning than a help. Its information is rather valuable to keep people out of scrapes, by impressing upon them the necessity of caution, than for any as- sistance it can render them when in a mess. Upon such occa- sions, professional advice alone can safely be relied on ; and such is the beauty of " the perfection of reason," that respectable pro- fessors will generally advise you to submit to loss and imposition, and compound the matter, rather than go to law. The best part of the tract is the new chapter to the present edition ; which con- tains an abridgment of the pamphlet called a Caution to Tenants. The subject relates to dilapidations ; the legal definition of which is not sufficiently fixed, and the law regarding whose recovery subjects the plaintiff' to certain costs by rendering a tender useless, and preventing the pay ment of money into court. Both these points, but especially the latter, require improving. At the same time, we suspect that, as a general rule, the landlord is the chief sufferer in dilapidation cases, let the tenant have to pay lqat he may.
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