Landlord and Tenant. Primitive custom often recognised two classes of tenants—those having fixed rights, who were in some sort owners or part owners, and those who derived their rights from the grant or contract of a superior. The British authorities in India have been compelled to take note of these primitive forms of tenure; in Bengal and elsewhere tenancy laws have been passed for the protection of cultivating occupiers. In the Roman law tenancy appears in two forms. Location is an agreement of letting and hiring; the rights of the parties are derived from the contract between them. Emphyteusis is tenure in perpetuity, or for a long term, at a fixed rent. Feudalism, as Sir H. Maine has shown, combines Roman ideas with primitive custom. The dominus of Roman law is a private person; the dominus of feudal law is the political superior of whom land is held. By the English common law, which was formed under feudal influences, the dominium of all lands was vested in the king as lord paramount; so that even a freeholder, holding to himself and his heirs for ever, is technically described as a tenant in fee-simple. When the freeholder makes a formal lease of his land, the lessee on entering acquires a limited interest which is protected by rules of common and statute law. A mere contract or agreement for a lease, not embodied in a formal conveyance, creates rights as between the parties, but it gives no interest in the land at common law. Equity, however, compels the lessor to fulfil his contract by executing a formal lease. A formal lease must be made by deed, unless it be a lease for three years or less at a rent equal to two-thirds of the improved value. An agreement for a lease must be proved by writing; and the Stamp Act requires that it should be stamped as if it were a lease. A tenant who has no formal lease or written agreement to show is, in strict theory, only a tenant at will; but if his landlord accepts rent from him he is entitled to a reasonable notice to quit. The English courts held long ago that a tenant from year to year was entitled to six months' notice, terminating with a year of the tenancy, and the Agricultural Holdings Act requires twelve months' notice in the case of agricultural tenants.
Under a lease or agreement, possession is transferred to the tenant during the term agreed. There is, on the landlord's part, no implied warranty as to the state of the premises, except in the case of a furnished house. A person who lets a house furnished is taken to warrant that it is in a habitable state. The landlord usually reserves the right to re-enter and put an end to the tenancy in case of non-payment of rent or other breach of covenant; but he is not now permitted to take full advantage of such stipulations in cases where the tenant is prepared to make pecuniary compensation for his default. Rent in arrear may be recovered by action, and also by the landlord's special remedy, Distress (q.v.). If a tenant fraudulently removes his goods in order to avoid a distress, the landlord may, within thirty days, seize and sell such goods wherever found, unless they have passed into the hands of a bona fide purchaser for value. The tenant has a right to assign his interest, or to sublet; but this right is, in practice, restricted by providing that the tenant shall not assign or sublet without his landlord's consent. An agricultural tenant had a common-law right to emblements—i.e. he might reap the crop he had sown, even if his term expired before harvest; and now an Act of 1851 enables a tenant to keep possession till the end of the year, though the interest of the person under whom he holds may have expired. Extensive powers of leasing have been given to tenants for life and other limited owners of settled land. In tracing the changes made by statute in the law of landlord and tenant, we observe that feudal and customary ideas have been giving way before the application of commercial principles. So far as England is concerned, the results of the change have been good on the whole. Landlords and farmers have been encouraged by the contract system to invest large sums in buildings, drainage, &c.; and a large amount of food is thus raised with a comparatively small expenditure of labour. In Ireland the English system has been widely introduced; but the peasant farmers have always clung to primitive ideas and customary rights. They regard themselves as owners of the land, subject to a tribute rent, and they think it unjust that rent should be raised by competition. See LAND LAWS, REPAIRS.
For the English law of landlord and tenant, see the standard work of Woodfall; Irish legislation on this subject is expounded in Roche and Rearden's Irish Land Code. See also the Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission, presented in 1882.
In the law of Scotland a lease assumes the form of a contract, binding on the parties; and by a statute of 1449 leases were made binding on singular successors—i.e. on those who may purchase from the lessor. If the lease be for more than a year it must be in writing, the term and the rent should be specified, and possession must be taken by the tenant. A written obligation to grant a lease is equivalent to a lease; and an agreement for a lease must be stamped as a lease. When the term of a lease has expired it may be continued from year to year by 'tacit relocation.' The remedies given to a landlord in respect of rent have been restricted by an Act of 1880, which abolishes the right of hypothec in respect of any land, exceeding two acres, let for agriculture or pasture. It has long been the practice of Scotch proprietors to grant farming leases for nineteen years. The Agricultural Holdings Act, 1883, is designed to give adequate security for tenants' capital invested in improvements; and the Crofters' Holdings Act, 1886, has conferred on small tenants in Highland counties rights somewhat analogous to the 'three Fs,' as understood in Ireland.
See Hunter on Landlord and Tenant, and the Reports of the Richmond Commission (1882) and the Crofters Commission (1884).
In the United States the law of Louisiana is based on the civil law; in all the other states English principles seem to have been adopted. Distress has been abolished in some states, but the landlord's remedy is practically preserved to him by the law of liens and attachments. In case of non-payment of rent the landlord may enter and dispossess the tenant, on giving him the notice required by law (see Stimson's American Statute Law). Commercial principles have been more rigorously applied to land in America than they are in England or Ireland; no special protection or favour has been extended to agricultural tenants.