The law of leases comprehends a great number of rules, which may be conve niently reduced to the following general heads: 1. The things which may be subjects of leases.
2. The persons who may grant leases, and their powers to grant.
3. The form of leases, and the legal construction of the agreements contained in them.
The examination of these subjects be longs to treatises on Law. The article Leases and Terms of Years in Bacon's ' Abridgment' is generally referred to as a good compendium of the law. A lease may contain any agreements that are law ful. The object of the present article is to consider what agreements farming leases should contain or should not con tain, in order that the lease may be most beneficial to the landlord and the tenant, and by consequence to the public gene rally.
The chief subjects of leases are houses and buildings of all kinds, cultivable lands, and mines. Many persons who have not the complete ownership of houses and lands, are enabled to grant leases under particular powers ; and there are many statutes under which particular classes of persons are enabled or retrained as to the granting of leases, such as Bishops, Deans and Chapters, and others. [BENEFICE, p. 346.] The kind of leases of which we shall treat here are farming leases, which are granted by persons who have full power to grant them on such terms as they please. The particular form of such leases, as already intimated, is a matter that belongs to the subject of public eco mony, and it is almost beyond the pro vince of direct legislation.
At present a great part of the land in England and Wales is held by large proprietors, and the number of land owners who cultivate their own estates is comparatively small. In many parts of the kingdom the number of small land owners who cultivate their own farms has certainly been decreasing for some cen turies, and they are probably fewer now than at any former period of our history. In England the great subdivision of land has been prevented by the form of govern ment and the habits and feelings of those who have had the chief political power: and the great increase of wealth that has arisen out of the manufacturing and commercial industry of the country has tended to prevent the subdivision of land and not to increase it. Those who acquire great wealth in England by manufactures and commerce generally lay out a large part of it in the purchase of land ; for the ownership of land is that which enables a man to found a family and to perpetuate it, to obtain social respect and considera tion, and also political weight in the ad ministration of public affairs. It facili
tates his election to the House of Com mons, and if he plays his part well, it may introduce him in due time to the House of Lords and place him among the nobility of England.
Those who cannot acquire land enough. to give them political weight, are still anxious to acquire land as a means of social distinction, and as a permanent investment which must continually rise in value. Thus there is a constant competition among the rich for the acquisition of land, which raises its price above its simple commercial value ; and a man of moderate means does not find it easy to purchase land in small quantities and on such terms as will enable him to obtain a proper remuneration for the cultivation of it.
The great mass of the cultivators in England are now tenant farmers, who hold their land either by leases for years or by such agreements as amount to a tenancy from year to year only ; and there is the like kind of competition among them to obtain land upon lease, that there is among the wealthy to obtain land by purchase. The consequence is that more rent is often paid for land than it is worth : a conse quence of the limited amount of land and of the number of competitors for it. This circumstance, however, combined with others, enables the landlord to impose conditions which are unfavourable to the tenant and to agriculture, and finally to himself.
Several things are essential to the good cultivation of land, whether it is held by lease or is the property of the cultivator. These essentials are, a knowledge of the best modes of husbandry, adequate capi tal, and a market in which the farmer may freely buy and sell all that he wants. Now, in the present state of agriculture in this country, not one of these three conditions exists in the degree which is necessary to ensure good cultivation. The greater part of the land in England, as already observed, is cultivated under leases or a tenancy from year to year; and the covenants in the leases are often such as to be an insuperable obstacle to good agriculture. The condition then of the tenant farmer, as determined by his lease, is that which we have to consider.