Mr. Buxton, M.P. for East Surrey, wrote two very good
letters on security of tenure to Monday's and Tuesday's Times. What he proposes is to give all farmers, properly so called, who have been already three years on their holdings,—Mr. Buxton auggests that probably very minute holdings might be excepted from the proposal,—a Parliamentary lease of 31 years ; in other words, he would refuse the aid of the State to any eviction (except for non- payment of rent) of a tenant who had not had such a lease. To tenants now in occupation he would give a different length of security, varying with the time they had already lived undisturbed, so that all the leases might not end at one date, but for the future all tenancies would be for 31 years,—or, if they were not, the landlord would know that he could not claim the aid of the State to compel any earlier eviction. The advantage of this over rival schemes is, as Mr. Buxton points oat, that it does not open the great and difficult question of the valuation of improvements, but simply secures the tenant long enough to reap the full benefit of his own improvements,—permanent buildings of course excepted, for which compensation would be made on the expiration of the lease. The difficulty in the scheme is that it treats all kinds of tenancies alike,—those which are really of the English sort, the landlord largely investing his own capital, as well as the more typical Irish tenancies. Also, perhaps, in many eases the 31 years would be— not too long a term, but too long to pass without any revision of the rental, which might fairly be raised if the farm had increased in value for causes not clue to the tenant's efforts. But Mr. Buxton is certainly right in contending that security for a lengthened
period is the first requifsite,—indeed, security against fregetent alterations of rent will undoubtedly be needful too.
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