Dismissing the tenant character of the landlord, and regarding him as owner pure and simple, we have to deal with him as contracting to give up the occupation of his land to another person, the tenant, for a consideration. In Roman law, the tenure of emphyteusis (a kind of perpetual lease originally used by corporations but afterwards by private owners), and precarium (or tenancy-at-will) occupied to some extent the place of the law of landlord and tenant in our system. The proper contract of letting and hiring (locatio-conductid) as applied to land had the following incidents. The conductor (tenant) was not technically regarded as possessor; i.e., he had not the aid of the interdicts in case of eviction either by the landlord or by strangers. The locator alone could sue in respect of the land, but the conductor had a personal action against the locator on the contract. The landlord was bound to make delivery to the tenant and permit him to occupy for the term agreed upon, and to keep the premises in proper repair. The landlord was answerable for any injury arising to the tenant from the defective condition of the premises. Finally, “the lιndlord must permit the tenant to carry away not only movables but even fixtures placed by the tenant, provided the tenant did not injure the house. Λ tenant of land was entitled to compensation for unexhausted improvements except such as he had specially agreed to execute in consideration of a lower rent” (see Hunter’s Introduction to Roman Law, p. 121). On the other hand, the conductor had to pay the rent subject to deductions for the total or partial loss of the crops, to exercise due care during his term, and give up possession at its expiration.

In English law the following terms are of fundamental importance. The landlord so contracting is said to demise his lands, and the instrument by which the contract is expressed would be a demise or lease. The word lease is very generally limited to the writing in which the agreement to let is expressed, but any contract of letting is as on the side of the landlord a demise, and as between the parties a lease. A lease or demise means a grant of the exclusive possession of the thing in question for a definite time; permission merely to use the thing for a particular purpose or on a particular occasion is a licence and not a lease. A lease further implies that the lessor intends to give up possession to the defendant for a determinate time, no matter how it may be expressed, and is so distinguishable from a mere agreement contemplating that the parties shall on some future occasion enter into the relations which a lease creates. The consideration promised by the tenant or lessee is termed the rent. The period of occupation prescribed is the term.

The Statute of Frauds (29 Car. II. c. 3) enacts that “all leases, estates, interests of freehold, or terms of years, not put in writing by the parties so making or creating the same or their agents thereunto lawfully authorized by writing, shall have the effect of leases or estates at will,”— except leases for a term not exceeding three years, whereon the reserved rent amounts to two-thirds of the improved value. When rent is accepted by the landlord, the tenancy-at-will is enlarged into a tenancy from year to year. By a later Act, 8 <fc 9 Vict. c. 106, a lease required by law to be in writing must now be made by deed.

A lease, like other written contracts, should clearly indicate the parties to and the effect of the contract. A date is not necessary, and, in the absence of a date, it will take effect from the day of delivery. But it must contain the names or other sufficient description of the parlies, a description of the premises to be demised, words appropriately expressing the fact of a present demise (demise or lease being the usual words), the date at which the term is to begin and end, and the rent. The rent or other services created in favour of the landlord by the lease are said to be reserved. And when things that would otherwise belong to the tenant under the lease, as woods, timber, trees, minerals, <fcc., are expressly withheld, they are said to be exceptecl. But these expressions do not apply to conditions giving to the landlord the right of shooting, fishing, and so on over the land, or any right of way or other easement thereon. That can be vested in the landlord only by a re-grant from the tenant, no matter by what expression the right is created. Such grant must be by deed; and, where a lease of the land would be effectual without a deed, a reservation of such rights as we have mentioned would not. There is a good deal of misconception on this point, for landlords are not generally understoed to hold their right to game on grant from their tenants.

In point of length of term tenancies are distinguishable as being either at sufferance, or at will, or from year to year, or for a term of years. A tenancy by sufferance exists where a person having obtained possession on a lawful title holds over after the title has determined, e.g., a tenant on lease for a term of years after the expiration of the lease. It has been said that this is not an estate at all but a fiction to prevent the continued possession being regarded as a trespass. It is not created by contract, but arises by implication of law; it is not assignable; and possession of the land can be resumed without previous demand to the so-called tenant. A tenancy-at-will exists when the tenant holds by agreement with the landlord, determinable at the will of either. Any signification of a desire to terminate, the tenancy, whether expressed as “notice” or not, will bring it to an end. A tenancy from year to year is a tenancy for one year certain, and is determinable only by a six months’ notice to quit, such notice terminating on an anniversary of the date of the beginning of the tenancy. A tenancy from year to year must last at least one year, but may be determined then, if a six months’ notice have been given; if not so determined it must endure for another year, again determinable in like manner, and it will so endure until terminated by such a notice. Apart from express agreement, it will be implied in law when, for example, the landlord accepts rent yearly or by parts (e.g., quarters) of a year. Similarly monthly tenancies, chiefly of furnished houses or lodgings, would be implied from the fact of rent being paid once a month. But that is a matter of presumption only. If it were proved that the parties agreed to a tenancy-at-will only, payment of rent by the quarter or any other period would not enlarge the nature of the tenancy. Lastly, a lease may be for a specified term, and the tenancy in that case comes to an end by the lapse of time, without notice to quit or any other formality.

These are the agreements by which the relations of 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 distinguish 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 he 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 resume possession under the agreement. The tenant, however, may, without disputing the validity 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 perplexing 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 landlord 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 the 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. i the profits of sown land, a tenant may be entitled to these whose term comes to an end by the happening of an uncertain contingency. (3) A similar right is very generally recognized by custom in tenants whose term expires in the ordinary way. The custom of the district, in the absence of stipulations between the parties, would be imported into their contract —the tenant going out on the same conditions as he came in. But with these exceptions the land in its improved condition passes over to the landlord. The tenant may have added to its value by buildings, by labour applied to the land, or by the use of fertilizing manures, but, whatever be the amount of the additional value, he is not entitled to any compensation whatever. This again is a matter which the parties may, if they please, regulate for themselves. As a matter of fact, landlords never allow a compensation clause to be inserted in their leases.

The Agricultural Holdings Act, 1875, attempts to remedy this injustice by enacting that compensation shall be paid to tenants for improvements the benefit of which has not been exhausted at the end of the lease. These are of three classes :—(1) Drainage of land, erection or enlargement of buildings, laying down permanent pasture, making and planting osier beds, making water meadows or works of irrigation, making gardens, roads, or bridges, water-courses, ponds, wells, or reservoirs, making fences, planting hops, planting orchards, reclaiming waste lands, and warping land. The tenant to establish a claim for compensation must have the landlord’s consent in writing to the improvements. The compensation is a sum equal to the amount originally expended, less one-twentieth for every year that has elapsed since, and the whole benefit of the improvement is taken to be exhausted in twenty years. (2) Boning lands with undissolved bones, chalking land, clay burning, claying, liming, and marling land, after notice in writing given to the landlord. They are deemed to be exhausted at the end of seven years, and the compensation is the sum expended, less one-seventh for every year. (3) Artificial or other purchased manure applied to the land, and cake or other feeding stuff consumed thereon by cattle, dec. Exhausted in two years, compensation to be a sum representing its fair value to an incoming tenant. The Act, however, has no application if the parties agree in writing, either on the contract of tenancy or otherwise, that it shall not apply. In point of fact, landlords insist upon the renunciation of the Act as a condition of granting a lease. The Act has accordingly been a dead letter.

The mutual rights of the parties are, as we have already said, regulated to a large extent by special provisions or covenants in the lease. The most usual of these are the following :—(1) The landlord covenants that the tenant shall have quiet enjoyment of the premises for the time agreed upon, and in the absence of such a proviso a covenant to this effect will be implied from the fact of letting. The obligation makes the landlord responsible for any lawful eviction of the tenant during the term, but not for wrongful eviction unless he is himself the wrongdoer, or has expressly made himself responsible for evictions of all kinds. (2) The tenant is presumed to undertake to use the property in a reasonable manner according to the purposes for which it was let, and to do reasonable repairs. The landlord is not presumed to have undertaken to put the premises in repair, nor to execute repairs. But the respective obligations of parties where repairs are, as they always are in leases for years, the subject of express covenant may vary indefinitely. The obligation is generally imposed on the tenant to keep the premises in “good condition” or “tenant-like repair,” and it will be construed with reference to the character of the premises demised, their age, and their condition. A covenant to repair, unless limited specially, makes the tenant liable to rebuild houses destroyed by accident. A...