Excerpt from Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries: A Series of Essays Published Under the Sanction of the Cobden Club

Take the case of a disputed account between the landlord and tenant. The former maintains that a year's rent is due to him the latter insists that he owes nothing. Do they come before a court of justice on equal terms, to have this question tried? On the contrary, the landlord, as the feudal superior, takes the law into his own hands, and without making any proof of his demand, he sends his bailiff to seize the goods of the tenant. The landlord was not obliged to apply to any officer of the law, or to give any security to pay damages if his demand should prove to be unfounded. But it was otherwise with the tenant if he saw his goods distrained by this summary process, he could not get them back without a troublesome replevin, which he could only get by giving security to pay the sum demanded. To discourage him from contesting the landlord's rights, he was compelled by an Act of Parliament to pay double costs if he failed. Still, at common law, the distress, or goods distrained, could not be sold and a tenant, mined and driven to despair, might submit to the loss, and still refuse to pay but an Act of Parliament was passed to enable the landlord to sell the goods and pay himself.

Still, he could not seize the tenant's crops while they were growing, as by the common law crops while they were growing were considered as a part of the soil and freehold, and could not be distrained. But here Parliament again intervened, and passed a law to enable the landlord to distrain the crops while they were still growing, so that as soon as the corn appeared above the ground he might send his keepers to take possession, and cut and carry it away when it was ripe.

If the tenant removed his goods to avoid a distress, an Act of Parliament intervened to visit him and the friends who assisted him with a penalty, although the landlord himself may have been at the same moment hiding his own goods to evade an execution.

In the same manner Acts of Parliament were passed to give the landlord the power of evicting his tenant for non-pay ment of rent, and of recovering possession of the land in cases in which he was not entitled to this remedy either by the terms of his contract or by the rules of the common law.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.