Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/290

 274 LANDLORD landlord and tenant, as the phrase is generally understood, are created, and they are the agreements under which most of the buildings and nearly the whole of the agricultural land are held by their occupiers. There are tenancies, however, in which the granter would not be spoken of as the landlord. Such is the position of the person to whom land is granted for his own life, or, it may be, for the life of another, called in technical language tenant for life and tenant pur autre vie. These are not cases of letting and hiring to which the relation of landlord and tenant is confined but are modes of holding property. The same may be said of the terms for long periods of years created for carrying out trusts in the settlement of estates. The tenant in such cases is the person who, when we come to the agreement of letting and hiring, stands in the place of the landlord. It may be observed that the law-books dis tinguish in point of dignity between estates for life, the lowest kind of freehold estates, and estates for any term of years however long, which are only leasehold estates. Reverting to the agreement of letting and hiring, it may be laid down that any person having an interest in land may, to the extent of that interest, create a valid tenancy. A tenant for years or even from year to year only may stand in his turn as landlord to another tenant. If lie profess to create a tenancy for a period longer than that to which his own interest extends, he does not thereby give to his tenant an interest available against the reversioner or remainder man. The subtenant s interest will expire with the interest of the person who created it. But as between the subtenant and his immediate lessor the tenancy will be good; and, should the interest of that lessor become greater than it was when the subtenancy was created, the subtenant will have the benefit of it. In the same way, as between lessor and lessee landlord and tenant the latter has no right to look beyond the grant of the former so as to call in question his title. Be that title what it may, the tenant, by accepting that position, is estopped from denying that it is good. It may be notoriously bad, but that is nothing to him. The landlord is not obliged to prove his title as against the tenant or any person claiming through his tenant. In an action of ejectment (for the recovery of land) the person claiming possession must in general -prove his own title mere possession being a prima facie sufficient defence, until a better title be shown. But a landlord seeking to secure possession of land from his tenant is not obliged to prove anything, except his right to rssume pos session under the agreement. The tenant, however, may, without disputing the viilidity of the title under which he entered, show that it has since been determined by lapse of time or by operation of law. A large portion of the land of the country being held under settlements whereby the person in possession for the time being had only the legal interest of a tenant for life, there were until recently great difficulties in the way of letting such land advantageously. The Leases and Sales of Settled Estates Act, 1856, now empowers any person entitled to the rents and profits of a settled estate to demise the same by deed for any term not exceeding twenty-one years to take effect in possession and at the best rent obtainable. Settlements containing express directions to the contrary will, however, avoid the statute ; and on the other hand a settlement may contain powers to the tenant for life to grant leases for even longer terms. The legal rights and duties of landlord and tenant respectively are in most cases defined by the contract of tenancy. The policy of the law has hitherto been to allow the landlord, who is virtually if not technically absolute owner of the land, to do as he pleases with it. The contract of tenancy has hitherto been a free contract, and, although in the absence of contract the law itself defines the rights of the parties, there is hardly one of these which may not be displaced or modified by the agreement, This, it may be said in passing, is the seat of the very widespread dissatisfaction that exists in all the three kingdoms with what are vaguely termed the land laws. A small class has been allowed to acquire absolute dominion over the land of the country, and may impose what terms it pleases on the rest of the community for the right to use the land. The law governing the devolution of land is intricate and per plexing no doubt, and by making conveyances expensive hinders the free distribution of the land among a larger class of owners. But that is not the real root of the present discontent. Its real root is the absolute dominion of the class of owners who are not cultivators, but who, having the monopoly of the land, may load the cultivators with what burdens they please. As for the law of laud- lord and tenant, it is still greater misconception to suppose that to be in fault. It is what the landlord or tenant choose to make it. There is very little of it, independently of contract, and what little there is may be altered as the parties please. No law can be better than one which allows men to make their own contracts and limits itself to enforcing them. That is what the law of landlord and tenant does. If its effects are bad, it must be because the original conditions of the contracting parties are other than they ought to be. We shall have to show that practical evils have led to a demand for an alteration on the law of landlord and tenant in the direction of limiting the power of the landlord to impose terms on the tenant. One privilege imposed by the law on the landlord must be excepted from what has just been said. The right to distrain for rent is a special interference of the law for the protection of the landlord. Besides suing for his rent as a man may for any other right, besides taking advantage of whatever covenants he may have made for entry on default of payment, a landlord may enter upon the demise premises and help himself to whatever articles of personal property he may find there, to an amount sufficient to satisfy his claim. Distress as a general rule extends to all movable property found on the premises, whether belonging to the tenant or not; but there are certain well-defined exemptions, as, for example, goods sent to a man publicly carrying on a trade to be worked at or dealt with in the way of his trade. And some things have the benefit of a conditional exemption, as horses employed to work the ground, which should not be taken so long as there is any other property to satisfy the distress. This privilege is an injurious interference with the property and rights of third persons. It exposes persons dealing with the tenant to the danger of losing whatever property of their own they may permit to be on his premises, and of having their claims against him postponed to those of tbe landlord. This is a wide departure from the general principle of the law, which is to leave the parties alone ; but even here the right to distress may be expressly abolished in the contract of tenancy if the parties please. Again, the land, on the expiration of the tenancy, becomes the absolute property of the landlord, no matter how it may have been altered or improved during the occupation. In certain cases the law has discriminated between the contending claims of landlord and tenant. (1) In respect of fixtures (which may be shortly defined as movables so affixed to the soil as to become part thereof), the tenant may sometimes remove them, e.g., when they have been brought on the premises for the purpose of being used in business. This, it is said, is done by way of encouraging trade, but it is curious that no similar principle has been admitted for the encouragement of agriculture. (2) In respect of emblements, i.e., the profits of sown land, a tenant maybe entitled to these whose term