The Celtic Magazine, Vol I, No. IV, February 1876: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to the Literature, History, Antiquities, Folk Lore, Traditions, and the Social and Material Interest of the Celt at Home and Abroad.Various
History
The Celtic Magazine, Vol I, No. IV, February 1876: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to the Literature, History, Antiquities, Folk Lore, Traditions, and the Social and Material Interest of the Celt at Home and Abroad.
enjoyment of property, and in effect amount to depriving proprietors of
a considerable part of the equivalent for which they gave their money;
and (3), that when a tenant makes an acceptable offer for a farm, he
does so after the fullest investigation as to its capabilities and
disadvantages, and with a good knowledge of the amount of game on the
ground, and the damage likely to be occasioned thereby; and, as thus,
the amount of rent offered is fixed by him after all these points have
received due consideration at his hands, he is precluded from afterwards
crying out against the one-sidedness of his contract. It will thus be
seen that there is just as much to be said on the one side as the other;
and clamour notwithstanding, we believe, the day is still distant when
the legislature will step in to interfere with free contract between
landlord and tenant, by laying down conditions which even both parties
with their eyes open, and of mutual consent, will not be allowed to
alter. In other words, in an age when the cry is for freedom from all
special advantages to owners of land, such as hypothec and entail, so as
to place it on an open footing with all other subjects, it would be
strange, indeed, were exceptional legislation required for the lessees
of land to give them the special advantages which the spirit of the age
denied to their landlords. Are we to have landlord right levelled down
while tenant right is to be levelled up? We have yet to see it. It
cannot, however, in fairness be denied that there are certain
circumstances in which the tenants' third complaint above-mentioned is
just and reasonable. While a tenant is strictly tied down under the
conditions of his lease to a certain rotation of cropping, and various
other regulations regarding his use of the land, the proprietor is left
practically unfettered as to the extent of increase of game that he may
allow to take place. Immunity in such an event is secured to the latter,
either by a clause to that effect in the lease or by the prudent
reluctance of the tenant to pursue his landlord through court after
court in the knowledge that even the extra-judicial expense of such
procedure would quickly amount to more than the ultimate damages
awarded, if awarded at all, and that the feelings engendered by the
contest would stand in the way of a renewal at the expiry of the lease.
There is here, undoubtedly, a manifest hardship to the tenant, for which
the legislature would be justified in passing a remedial measure. It
would quite consist with the acknowledged and equitable principles of
jurisprudence that cheap and speedy redress for the tenant against such
uncontemplated and undue increase of game should be provided by
legislative enactment. All wrongs have their remedies; but the remedy in
such a case is not the giving an inalienable right to ground game to the
tenant, as that would amount to a wronging of the landlord, who might
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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