Leaseholder

“ For all these unfairnesses to individuals, hindrances to trade, and injuries to the community, is proposed the remedy stated—that a leaseholder who has twenty (or, as some suggest, ten or fifteen) years to run, shall be empowered to demand that his land be made freehold upon the payment of its value, as assessed by some specified tribunal. ”

“ By this Act leases are allowed to be broken by the tenant, but not by the landlord. All leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the Act have the option of going into court and getting their contracts broken and a judicial rent fixed. No equivalent power is given to the landlords. ”

“ Their thoughts are evidently gloomy even at their most exhilarating times; their aspect is indeed a constant strain on pity and commiseration. Where, for instance, can be seen a show more dismal than the range of faces at a feast of some great City Company? The people are all evidently men of business, and, besides, are leaseholders. ”

“ The majority of the peasants continued as leaseholders. But after the system of 'common fields' was abolished there was this change in favour of the landlords, namely, that in leasing their land they could demand as high a rent as the peasants would pay, the amount being determined by free competition. The landlords thus obtained an advantage, while the peasants, though subject to increased rent, were far more independent than before. ”

“ Whether a particular instrument is a lease, or an agreement for a lease, or a bare licence, is a question the answer to which depends to a large extent on the circumstances of individual cases; and the only general rule is that in a lease there must be an expression of intention on the part of the lessor to convey, and of the lessee to accept, the exclusive possession of the thing let for the prescribed term and on the prescribed conditions. The landlord must not part with the whole of his interest, since, if he does so, the instrument is not a lease but an assignment. ”

“ By the leasehold system, the landlord is not content with taking the houses that he did not build ; he also takes the goodwill of the trade attached to the house, and, on renewing a lease, extorts a heavy payment for allowing the tenant to continue to enjoy his own business which he has brought to the house. It is all cant to talk about freedom of contract where a tenant would be ruined if he did not submit to his landlord's terms. ”

“ A landlord leases his sites in the first instance to builders, for periods of great length. When the building leases fall in, and the houses become the landlord's direct property, it is almost invariably an object with him to lease them for periods, shorter indeed than the original building lease, but always of considerable length. As long as houses are in the hands of a building lessee, or his representatives, the ground landlord can derive no profit from them beyond the rent reserved in the lease, and can exercise no control over them outside the covenants contained in that document. ”

“ Clearly the property of the landlord; for in consideration of their being made, improved, kept up, and given up by the tenant at the end of the term, the landlord gave to the latter a lease of the premises for 31 years, at a proportionate rent.
We have taken some pains to prove this, not for the sake of being hard upon tenants in any way, but merely to show, that supposing past "improvements," which are not "improvements," will have in future to be destroyed, those who have made them agreeably to the conditions of such leases have no just claims respecting them. ”

“ Enough appears in the terms of the instrument called the lease to show that both the lessee and lessors treated the buildings 'during the process of erection' as the property of the plaintiffs, and to show beyond controversy that the buildings when completed vested in the plaintiffs as their absolute property, subject only to the right of the builder to occupy and use the same, just as in the ordinary case where the owners of property agree to lease the same to be used by the lessee for a stipulated rent. ”

“ There are many other evils connected with the leasehold system, and one is the immense development it gives to the speculative builder and to the army of money-lenders and lawyers who are necessary to his existence. In the part of London where I live the ground-landlord gave building leases to a speculative builder, who, to raise capital for his operations, mortgaged each house before it was completed to a money-lending company, and subsequently gave second charges upon them to a Bank for further advances. ”

“ The statute in the present case is denominated the 'Rent Law' and its purpose is to permit a lessee to continue in possession of leased premises after the expiration of his term against the demand of his landlord, and in direct opposition to the covenants of the lease, so long as he pays the rent and performs the conditions as fixed by the lease or as modified by a commission created by the statute. This is contrary to every conception of leases that the world has ever entertained, and of the reciprocal rights and obligations of lessor and lessee. ”

“ Why, these leases are perpetual, and the tenant cannot be dispossessed. The longer a lease is, other things being equal, the better it is for the tenant, all the world over. Let us suppose two farms, the one leased for five years, and the other forever. Which tenant is most independent of the political influence of his landlord, to say nothing of the impossibility of controlling votes in this way in America, from a variety of causes? Certainly he who has a lease forever. He is just as independent of his landlord as his landlord can be of him, with the exception that he has rent to pay. ”

“ No, no; landlords rather get less for their lands than they are worth, instead of more, for that plain reason. To compel the tenant to take a lease, therefore, for a term as short as five years, is to injure him, you think; to place him more at the control of his landlord, through the little interest connected with the cost and trouble of moving, and through the natural desire he may possess to cut the meadows he has seeded, and to get the full benefit of manure he has made and carted. I see how you reason, young sir; but you are behind the age—you are sadly behind the age. ”

“ They write, and proclaim, and make speeches, as if the anti-rent troubles grew out of the durable lease system solely, whereas we all know that it is extended to all descriptions of obligations given for the occupancy of land—life leases, leases for a term of years, articles for deeds, and bonds and mortgages. It is a wide-spread, though not yet universal attempt of those who have the least claim to the possession of real estate, to obtain the entire right, and that by agencies that neither the law nor good morals will justify. ”

“ Like all contracts, there must be a consideration, competent parties, and legality of purpose.
The contract by which one party becomes a tenant is called a lease. The party granting a lease is called the landlord. The owner to whom the lease is given is called the tenant or lessee. A lease of property is not a sale. By a lease of real property, the lessor grants but a portion of what he possesses. By making a sale of real property, the grantor transfers his entire interest. If a tenant transfers his entire interest in the lease, it is a sale, and is usually [270] called an assignment. ”

“ I may even add that I have seen a number of these leases, and my tenants may feel certain that I will never sign anything like them. It seems to me that the essential point of a lease is that it should be bilateral—that the two parties should be bound for the same time. Each runs some risk. If the years are good the landlord does not [Pg 93] benefit by the rise, but if they are bad he does not suffer from the fall. ”

“ The leases were alike in that they provided for terms of ninety-nine years each, with a right of perpetual renewals; with right of re-entry by the lessor for forty days' default in payment of the rent, or distress, at his option; two of them provided that for sixty days' default in the payment of the rent the lessor might re-enter and terminate the lease; each lease contained an option for a purchase in fee at a price of which the annual rent was equivalent to eight per cent; each required the lessee to erect a dwelling house upon the premises during the year of the making of the lease. ”

“ That lease provides that, if the premises shall become vacant or the term shall end prior to the expiration date because of any act of the tenant, the landlord may re-enter, relet the premises, and apply the rents received on the reletting to the payments of rents due under the lease, and that the tenant shall not be entitled to any surplus, but shall remain liable for any deficiency which, at the option of the landlord, shall become payable on demand or as it accrues from month to month. ”

“ The good will of a lease which the landlord is in the habit of renewing is property, and rights growing out of it, whether by contract or otherwise, will be protected and enforced by a court of equity. ”

“ Nothing is left in the lessor but the right to receive rent. No power of control in the management of the road and in the exercise of the franchises of the company is reserved. A solitary exception to this statement, of no value in the actual control of affairs, is found in the sixth clause of the lease, which covenants that the lessees will discharge any one in their service on the request of the corporation, evidenced by a resolution of the board of directors. ”

“ An ordinary boarder, who has a room and boards in the house of another and who retains the possession and care of his room, is not a tenant. On the other hand the letting of an entire floor for lodgings may create a tenancy, and so may even a single room. A lease for an unlawful purpose is void, for example, for the sale of spirituous liquors contrary to law.
If the premises are occupied by the lessee and his rent is paid as specified in the lease, this is regarded as a ratification by him of an invalid or void lease. ”

“ A bad tenant slips through a lease. For a good tenant it is, we maintain, an insufficient reward; if at the present usually prevailing rental (about £1 per acre) the bulk of future improvements, supposing that they are to be really improvements, devolves upon him. And we have lively recollections, which make us inimical to leases, of an aged relative of our own having been obliged a short time before her death to quit a house in which she had spent most of her life, because her lease had expired, and the house was sold over her head. ”

“ Leases at Rack Rent of any land to be inclosed, either alone or together with any Messuages, Cottages, Toftsteads, etc., to be void; the proprietor paying the lessee such satisfaction as the Commissioners direct. Exception.—No lease of any Messuage, Cottage, Toftstead, Lands, Hereditaments or ancient Estate in respect of which allotment is made for Right of Common is to be void; but the allotments made to these are to belong to the proprietors who must pay to the lessees such satisfaction as the Commissioners direct. ”

“ This, however, is as unreasonable as that a tenant should complain that in paying rent he is not on an equality with the proprietor in fee. The sale of crown lands is merely the transference of a beneficial lease. ”

“ This man treated all these branches of the subject, as if the tenants had acquired certain mysterious interests by time and occupation, overlooking the fact that the one party got just as good a title as the other by this process; the lease being the instrument between them, that was getting to be venerable. If one party grew old as a tenant, so did the other as a landlord. I thought that this lecturer would have been glad to confine himself to the Manor leases, that being the particular branch of the subject he had been accustomed to treat ”

“ Our tenants are121 not afraid of the bastinado, but they are terrified at the rise of rent. This is the state of things amongst the tenant-farmers, farming without leases.12 In England leases are the exception, and not the rule. But even where you have leases in England—where you have leases or agreements—I doubt whether they are not in many cases worse tenures than where there is no lease at all; the clauses being of such an obsolete and preposterous character as to defy any man to carry on the business of farming under them profitably. ”

“ If he elect to adopt a lease, the receiver becomes vested with the title to the leasehold interest, and a privity of estate is thereby created between the lessor and the receiver, by which the latter beocmes liable upon the covenant to pay rent. ”

“ The tenant must make a conscientious use of the land, according to the stipulations of the lease, and especially to keep it in a good state of cultivation. The tenant cannot alter the existing mode of cultivation or cropping to the damage of the land or the prejudice of a subsequent lease. He must conform with all local laws and customs as to paths, foot-bridges, ditches, dikes, hedges, roofs, aqueducts, etc., and must replace all implements and tools of small value which may have become worn out. The tenant cannot underlet without consent of landlord, regardless of duration of lease. ”

“ It has, accordingly, been solemnly proposed in the Legislature of New York, that the statute of descents should be so far altered, that when a landlord, holding lands subject to certain leasehold tenures, dies, or a descent is cast, that it shall be lawful for the tenants, on application to the chancellor, to convert these leasehold tenures into mortgages, and to obtain the fee-simple of the estates in payment of the debt! In other words, A leases a farm to B forever, reserving a ground-rent, with covenants of re-entry, etc., etc. ”