THE WELSH LAND COMMISSION'S REPORT.
THIS is by no means a document to be lightly put aside. We may agree with or differ from the con- clusions of the majority of the Commissioners, but at least we must recognise that, whether mistakenly or not, they are drawn from a very thorough-going and in- structive review of the origins, the gradual development, and the present character of the conditions of the agricul- tural problem in Wales. And, so far as we are able to judge, the Commissioners, though perhaps all of them had preconceived views as to the direction in which a solution of that problem was to be sought, appear to have applied themselves to the arduous and complicated in- vestigation imposed upon them in a candid and judicial spirit. The Commission was appointed by Mr. Gladstone in 1893 in view of the widespread discontent which was alleged to exist in Wales with the circumstances and con- ditions of the tenure of agricultural land prevailing there.
The Commissioners find that discontent to be altogether of modern growth. Although under the Tudors English principles of land tenure were substituted in Wales by the authority of Parliament for the curiously complicated system of partly feudal, but more largely -tribal, tenure which previously prevailed, it is acknowledged that the lawyers of Queen Elizabeth's time, under whom the substitution was completed, carried it through with the intention of doing justice to all concerned, and that, speaking broadly, they succeeded in fulfilling that inten- tion. By a process which the Commissioners describe in an interesting manner, tenancies from year to year very extensively took the place of the renewable leases which were contemplated, and indeed provided for, under Elizabeth. They seem, on the whole, to have been generally preferred by the small holders, whose descendants form the great body of the fartniug tenantry of Wales, as under them the fines attached to the renewal of leases, which were often of uncertain amount, were avoided, and the uncertainty of the yearly tenure does not appear to have been felt as a serious evil. Early in the present century, however, or perhaps rather sooner, an estrangement began to develop itself between the owners and occupiers of land. It probably began with the establishment of the great Calvinistic Methodist Society, which was very largely joined by the peasantry, and not at all by the landlords, who looked upon its growth with undisguised aversion. The alienation thus begun seems to lave been developed by the very high rents which grew up during the great war, and the failure of the landlords to lower them at all adequately when the artificial conditions which had justified or excused them had passed away. Even so, however, it seems to be held by the Commis- sioners that the relations between landlords and tenants might have continued fairly satisfactory if the former had not in 1859 and in 1868 used their power in a considerable number of cases to evict tenants for voting contrary to their wishes at Parliamentary elections. These evictions are represented as having caused an amount and an intensity of indignation and apprehension quite out of proportion to the scale on which they were conducted, which, indeed, was not very con- siderable. They seem to have, almost suddenly, brought home to the Welsh tenantry the fact that they were at the mercy of their landlords, and that while only a small proportion of landlords actually exercised, any of them might exercise, the power of clearing their estates of tenants, otherwise unobjectionable, who should claim the right of discharging any civic duty according to their conscience. In a very few years after 1868 the protection of the ballot was given to the voter, and since then the general results of Parliamentary elections have shown, as the Commissioners acknowledge, that the franchise is exercised by the predominantly Liberal tenantry without any effective control from the generally Tory landlords. But the feeling of insecurity has remained, and exists, it is intimated, with regard to openly active participation by tenants in general or local politics. There has also been in force during much the same period, and this on a much larger scale, a practice of using notices to quit partly as a means of inducing tenants to agree to altera- tions in the terms of their tenancies, and partly as enabling landlords desirous of selling their estates to convey them to the purchasers " in hand." The latter form of this grievance appears to be a good deal more widely felt than the former at the present time. On the larger and older estates it is clear that, speaking generally, the tenants have very little to complain of, and are often treated with much consideration. But a great deal of land has been changing hands in Wales of late years, and many of the purchasers, having bought from commercial motives, construe their legal rights over their tenants in a commercial spirit. Another very important element in the Welsh agricultural situation, as depicted by the Commissioners, remains to be noticed. It is the "land hunger" of the Welsh peasantry. Landlords need never fear that if they lose one tenant there will be any difficulty in obtaining another. Derelict farms are practically un- known in Wales. Thus the economic readjustment of the relations between landlord and tenant which agricultural depression has caused in England, finds no counterpart in the Principality. Thus far we have been indicating views of the Welsh situation, historical and actual, to which all the Commis- sioners put their signatures. They differ when they come to remedies. Or, rather, the majority of the Commis- sioners, to the number of six, with Lord Carrington at their head, have two sets of remedies, one which they embody in a Report which they sign with the minority, as better than nothing, and the other which they sign by them- selves ; while the minority—Lord Kenyon, Sir John Llewelyn, and Mr. Seebohm—explain in a separate Report why they cannot go so far as their colleagues. Lord Carrington, Mr. Brynmor Jones, Q.C., and their co-signa- tories of the majority are decidedly of opinion that nothing will be really satisfactory but a complete regulation of the 'Welsh agricultural system of tenure by law, largely on the lines of the Scottish Crofters Act, but stopping short of the present Irish Land-laws. That is to say, they would give judicial rents and security of tenure to all tenants, but they would not give the outgoing tenant the right of selling the interest so created. They are of opinion that the case of 'Wales presents a fairly close parallel to that of the crofting districts of Scotland, and they are greatly impressed by the evidence of Sheriff Brand, the head of the Crofters' Court, as to the benefits which have resulted to the community in that part of Great Britain from the establishment of the crofters as the practically immovable payers of " fair " rents. The minority of the Com- missioners, while anxious to see considerable improve- ments introduced into the Agricultural Holdings Act in the interest of the tenant, deprecate the creation of statutory tenancies, and dispute the alleged parallelism between the case of the Welsh tenantry as a body and that of the Scotch crofters. Here we feel bound to declare our decided concurrence with the minority of the Commission. We should not indeed be unprepared to admit that a system of statutory tenancies would very possibly put a stop at an early date to much of the existing irritation among tenants in Wales. But, as it seems to us, the gain would be bought too dearly. Nothing is more evident from the large part of the Report which is signed by the whole body of the Com- missioners, than that what is essential to the development of Welsh agriculture as a whole into a really healthy and Prosperous condition is the cordial and liberal co-operation of landlord with tenant. Not only so, but it is clear that on many large estates such co-operation is already given. Figures of a very impressive kind are given as to the large percentages of the gross receipts from their estates which many landlords expend upon keeping up buildings and on improvements of all kinds. Nothing, in our opinion, can be more certain than that any legislation that would turn the landlord into a mere rent-charger would tend, except in the case of unusually patriotic and enlightened landlords, to kill their interest in their pro- perties. The evidence taken before the Commission shows that there is at present a considerable sprinkling of enter- prising and enlightened agriculturists among the Welsh tenants, ready and able to bring a substantial amount of capital to the development of their holdings. But if men such as these had to find the means for keeping up, and where necessary renewing, the farm buildings, the fencing, and the drains, we may be well assured that they would not be in a position, as they now are, to show the wa,y,to, their neighbours in respect of good cultivation and stock- raising. If this would be so with these natural leaders in. the agricultural community, the effect of a diminution in the application of landlords' capital would be still more serious in the case of the great body of the tenantry, who as is shown by testimony to which all the Commissioners call attention, are sadly wanting in the capital required, as things now are, to do justice to their holdings. Having regard to such considerations as these, we are constrained to hold that the proposals of the majority of the Commissioners in favour of land legislation for Wales, embodying two out of the "Three F's," must be rejected as likely to lead to a distinct retrogression and not an advance in the condition of Welsh agriculture, to a decline and not a rise of the body of the Welsh farmers in the scale of civilisation. At the same time, there is evidently a strong case for action on the part of Government and Parliament in the direction of a reinforcement of the Agricultural Holdings Act as a protection to the tenant. On this subject the whole body of the Commissioners sign important recommendations. In addition to simplifications of procedure and other amendments of detail, they all advise that when notices to quit are sent round from an estate office with a view to a revaluation of the holdings, it should be held that, as undoubtedly is the case, a new tenancy is virtually thereby constituted, and that the new rent being assessed on the improved value of the holding the tenant shall be entitled either to a sum down equiva- lent to the compensation he would receive if he were leaving, or an adequate allowance in the final assessment of the new rent. This seems to us to be a perfectly just arrangement, entirely in accordance with the intention of Parliament in passing the Agricultural Holdings Act, and likely to exercise a valuable effect on the relations between landlord and tenant. Nor, somewhat novel as they may appear to the English mind, do we see any objection in principle to the two other leading proposals of the united Commissioners,—first, that a new pur- chaser of an estate should not be entitled to disturb any of the tenants who fulfil their contracts of tenancy, for three years after the purchase ; and secondly, that any landlord who evicts a tenant "capriciously," that is, except for some breach of his contract of tenancy, should be liable to pay some compensation, over and above that due under the existing Agricultural Holdings Act, for improvements, on account of the heavy charges to which a farm tenant is always put in moving to another holding. It is a striking fact that such recommendations as these are signed by such men as Lord Kenyon, Sir John Llewelyn (both Welsh landlords), and Mr. Seebohm. It means that there is really a good deal of injustice to be set right, and we trust that the Unionist Government will recognise that the ends of true Conservatism can best be promoted by setting that injustice right promptly and completely.
Previous page
