THE FARMERS AND THEIR TENURE.
THERE is much. to. excite intellectual as well as political interest in the slow- straggle of the. English Farmers towards a better tenure. Their representatives are not in-the least like the representatives of the. Irish farmers. They are perfectly avrare,. to begin with,.that they are not the ,strongest class in.zthe kingdom, but only a-strong, class; and-that if they rouse the.lancilordeto-estreme Madan. they may have to wait for years, the landlords.-havinglin.the „teals resort a right;that
of cultivating for themselves through bailiffs, which in practice did not exist in Ireland. There, the landlord who attempted it was certain to be shot, much more certain than if he had evicted tenants; here, the wildest tenant never denies that "if his landlord is such a fool," he has an absolute moral and legal right to till his own lands. The tenants' advocates therefore use language of studied, and we are bound to say, occasionally
of artificial moderation, in order to get a hearing. Then they not only do not hate the landlords as a caste, but they are wholly opposed to anything like plunder, and protect the freehold in all their proposals with an anxious carer evident, for
example, in the clauses of the Alliance Land Bill about deterio- ration. The claim for deterioration is not of much use to a good landlord, for legal deterioration, as a rule, is a result of the insolvency or poverty of the tenant, and it is not of much use to sue a bankrupt ; but it is an immense power in the hands of a grasping landlord, who can afford to threaten legal proceedings which would half ruin a tenant, even if he won his suit. Still, the Alliance concede the claim, as essential to equal justice. What they and those they represent are, in fact, seeking, is more security, not a copyhold tenure ; and they suggest this and that method of attaining their end in a very interesting way, and will, we doubt not, before they have done, with the assistance of the Government, which knows all districts and all cultures, hit upon a working scheme.
They have not, we are convinced, hit it yet ; and as we sympathise strongly with their object, upon which, indeed, the future of English Agriculture depends, we will point out once more where we conceive their weak points will be found. We understand the Alliance to be seeking, as Mr. Gladstone hinted at Leeds, and as Mr. Howard hinted in his speech on Tuesday, at the meeting which ratified the Alliance Land Bill, some- thing more than the security usually defined as " compensa- tion for unexhausted improvements ;" and we will try to define what that something is. A farm differs from- a house, even considered as property, in one material respect. A sensible householder is well aware that his occupation slowly but certainly deteriorates the house. " Edifices have only duration ; it is ruins which have eternity ;" and however careful a tenant may be, a house slowly but surely weary-out.
The mortar loses its adhesiveness, the bricks crumble away, the foundations suffer slight injuries from vibration, from the percolation of water, or in cities from deeper drainage, till in old London streets "under-pinning," a most costly operation, becomes necessary, if the house is to stand. A tenant of a house, therefore, can by no possibility have a moral claim against his landlord on the ground that his occupancy, solely as occupancy, has been beneficial to the property. It has not. But the farmer thinks he has a claim, and he may be right, for his occupation, solely as an occupation fol- lowed by steady husbandry, may be most beneficial to a farm. It is quite possible for Mr. Hodgson, solely by occupying and cultivating Greenholm properly for twenty- one years — by, for example, merely removing stones and improving the ditches—to make Greenholm a much more desirable farm than it was when he took it. He may even make for it a reputation—and on dairy farms he
constantly does this—which is equal to the reputation of a. shop, and of itself will draw much better tenants than a.farm of equal value but in bad repute will. The farmer thinks that as this improvement is due to him, he ought to benefit by it, either in payment if disturbed, or continuance at the old rent. Unfortunately, such an improvement, though often greater than a new system of drains or a new building, is invisible, indefinable, and measurable only by the increased price that a good fresh tenant will give for the holding. The farmer wants, therefore, to have his work estimated not by valuers whom he profoundly distrusts, knowing how much profit a large landlord can put into their hands, but by the fresh tenant, or in other words, asks for Free Sale. That is the proposal of the Alliance, and it undoubtedly will secure •all the tenant wishes in a very easy way,—the " whole value " of his improvement, even if invisible, as well as compensation for his unexhausted outlays. So great, indeed, is the advantage of the scheme in its completeness and its automatic working, and the temptation it offers to good cultivation, that we should not be sorry to see it made the regular law, operating always in the absence of contract.
But then the farmer, or the Alliance for him, waste to go beyond that. He thinks his right to the " whole improve- ment" of his holding so clear, that the landlord.ought not to be allowed to "contract himself out of it," oz-ha, Iwo hie
farm back if a fresh tenant offers the improver a fancy price. The latter seems a slight matter, but it is very serious, for if a landlord must accept a new tenant, unless prepared to equal his bid, a rich tenant, perhaps a Mechi, with a shop in London, might buy up all the holdings on an estate, farm on the grand scale, and failing, ruin his landlord too. Apart from any right of patronage, which landlords, of course, value intensely, it is essential, merely for the safety of property, that the landlord should have some veto on the price to be paid, should, in fact, have right of re-entry at a reasonable figure. He may want to cultivate for himself, and cannot, surely, be justly compelled to pay for that wish any sum that any competitor for the holding may choose to offer. There are districts in England where, on that system, the farms being attractive for other reasons than profit, a landlord would be deprived of his control of his land altogether. No Court would calculate the " amenity " of the farm in its letting value, and no landlord could recover pos- session, except by paying an unreasonable fine for his own land. The Lords will never pass that proposal ; nor is it just. The landlord must have a veto on the amount to be paid, and if he has, may just as well be authorised to pay the fair amount himself. That is, the tenant would be entitled not to Free Sale, but to full and fair compensation for " un- exhausted improvements" if he gives up voluntarily, and to compensation for " the whole improvement " if he is compul- sorily removed. And then comes the crucial question of all, is the " whole improvement " of such a kind that it should be granted by law, in spite of a written contract to the contrary ?
We confess we are unable to see it. That compensation for unexhausted improvements should be given in spite of contract is just enough. Nobody has any moral right to contract to allow himself to be robbed, to the general injury of the community, and that is what the farmer does who signs away his right to compensation for things clearly belonging in justice to him. But the same farmer must have a right to contract to do his very best by the land, without seeking com- pensation for his fidelity to his work. It is surely not wicked to promise to be a good tenant without other pay than the tenancy. Take an extreme case on the farmer's side. A man and his son have cultivated for three leases, that is, sixty- three years, so well that the farm has become the most desirable in the district. The landlord then wants the farm for his second son, and gives the tenant notice and compensa- tion for " unexhausted improvements." The whole district cries shame on the landlord, and it is a shame, just as it would be a shame to discharge an old and blameless servant without a reason ; but in what way, if there was a written contract, is it a pecuniary wrong ? There is not even a tacit contract that there shall be no disturb- ance, but a written contract that disturbance may be ; no unwritten law, as in Ireland, that tenant and landlord are partners, with unequal rights ; no claim whatever recognisable, except in foro conscientice. A much harder thing might be done in the way of foreclosing a mortgage, or exacting a bond debt, but where is, or by possibility can be, a legal remedy ? For the law to say that no document shall be valid if it leads to hardship, is to knock the very foundation of commerce and agriculture—and, we feel bound to add—morality, to pieces. A man is to keep a contract against himself, if he made it freely, and the circumstances which in Ireland prevented freedom, the terrible alternative between a holding or the workhouse, do not exist here. We look, we confess, with extreme jealousy upon the prohibition of contracts, except when the contract is either wrong in itself, or contrary to public good ; and though of course Parliament must settle what is for the public good, it should use that right with the utmost caution and reserve. Will the good to agriculture of prohibiting a contract to farm well without pay be sufficient to justify such an interference with human freedom ? It may be so, but we confess we are unable to see that it would be equal to the injury done by taking away a right of re-entry secured to landlords by law and custom for ages, and in no way evil in itself. That England would be better cultivated by copyholders or perpetual tenants than by farmers on lease may be perfectly true, but then the Alliance should ask for that tenure, and propound its scheme of compensation. We beg we may not be mistaken. We are not disputing ;or a moment that some portion of the increment of value secured by good cultivation belongs to the tenant who has so cultivated. It does belong to him, though human ingenuity would be sorely taxed to say what the share was. It cer-
tainly is not the whole, as some farmers argue, for the best cultivation in the world is useless if the land has not certain inherent qualities to respond to it, and those qualities belong to the landlord. But still there is a share, and our contention is, not that there is no share, but that the tenant has a right to sell his share in advance, if he likes, to the landlord. Where is the road out of that argument, short of declaring that neither tenant nor landlord is to judge for himself, but that the Legislature must judge for all ? And yet, if that argument is conceded, it ceases to be possible to secure for the tenant more than full compulsory compensation for unexhausted im- provements, and a presumption of law, in the absence of con- tract, that he is entitled also to share in any improvement what- ever produced by him. We desire strongly to see the insecurity of English tenants got rid of, but we must take care that in doing it, the authority of the Commandments is not got rid of too.
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