that you will hear the same person who would vehemently denounce a landlord for insisting on a rack rent, detail with complacency the enormous sums of money which this or that person has obtained for his tenant right, from some ill-advised successor to his farm, whom he has skinned by the process, and left stranded for life on the barren acres:[1] Yet it is in the prosperity of this latter individual, on whose solvency the proper cultivation of the land will depend, rather than in that of the outgoing; tenant, that both the landlord and the community is interested.
From the foregoing considerations it is apparent that competition is an irrepressible force:[2] that if stifled in one direction, it will burst out in another;
- ↑ "It is, in the great majority of cases, not a reimbursement for outlay incurred, or improvements effected on the land, but a mere life insurance or purchase of immunity from outrage. Hence, the practice is more accurately and significantly termed, 'selling the good-will.'
"And it is not uncommon for a tenant without a lease to sell the bare privilege of occupancy or possession of his farm without any visible sign of improvement having been made by him, at from ten to sixteen, up to twenty and even forty years' purchase of the rent."
Evidence of John Andrews, Esq., Farmer and Agent.
"The tenant-right is more valuable than any compensation for improvement could be, though we have not many sales of farms, except by ill-doing tenants, who work the land till they have nearly exhausted it, and then sell it, and get a good deal of money upon it; and I have seen parties get a good deal of money by such sales who would be fairly liable to an action for dilapidations."
- ↑ The subject is resumed in the following conclusions in the Summary of the Evidence given before the Devon Commission:
