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experience of farming, that in many parts of Great Britain no
sufficient compensation was secured to the tenant for his unexhausted
improvements. In some counties and districts this compensation was
given by established customs, in others customs existed which were
insufficient, in many they did not exist at all. It must be confessed
that often when a tenant leaves his farm there is more compensation
due to the landlord than to the tenant. Human nature being what it is,
the temptation to get as much out of the land just before leaving it
is wellnigh irresistible to many farmers.

In these days, when the landlord is often called upon by the tenant to
do what the tenant used to do himself, the question of compensation to
the tenant must on many estates appear to the landlord extremely
ironical. It is, in the greater number of cases, the landlord who
should receive compensation, and not the tenant; and though he has
power to demand it, such power is over and over again not put in
force.

At the same time there are bad men in the landlord class as in any
other, and from them the tenant required protection. By the
Agricultural Holdings (England) Act of 1875, 38 & 39 Vict. c. 92,
improvements for which compensation could be claimed by the tenant
were divided into three classes. First class improvements, such as
drainage of land, erection or enlargement of buildings, laying down of
permanent pasture, &c., required the previous consent in writing of
the landlord to entitle the tenant to compensation. Second class
improvements, such as boning of land with undissolved bones, chalking,
claying, liming, and marling the land, the latter now hardly ever
practised, required notice in writing by the tenant to the landlord of
his intention, and if notice to quit had been given or received, the
consent in writing of the landlord was necessary. For third class
improvements, such as the application to the land of purchased manure,
and consumption on the holding by cattle, sheep, or pigs, of cake or
other feeding stuff not produced on the holding, no consent or notice
was required. Improvements in the first class were deemed to be
exhausted in twenty years, in the second in seven, and in the third in
two. It was the opinion of the Richmond Commission of 1879 that,
notwithstanding the beneficial effects of this Act, no sufficient
compensation for his unexhausted improvements was secured to the
tenant.

The landlord and tenant also mig