IX.

TILLAGES.

THE word "tillage" comprehends ploughing, harrowing, fallowing, manuring, and all the other operations performed during the process of cultivating arable land. There is no direct law to point out the extent of the tenant's claim for the tillages that may remain unexpended at the time he quits possession of land, except when held by lease or other agreement; and unless he can prove that he or his predecessors paid such allowances at the time of entry, he is entitled by law to none at his removal. This observation applies to tillages only; as to the crops growing at the time of quitting, there prevails a custom founded on an ancient law, that "he who sows, shall

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have the emblements,' that is, he shall

have the crop itself, or the value, to which

the tenant is undoubtedly entitled, if sown before he receives a notice to quit possession. But if the tenant sows after receiving a notice of removal, the landlord can reap the crop, because the term of holding was fixed, the tenant was apprised of it, and he has no right to sow corn, when he knows he will not be in possession at the time of reaping, unless agreed upon and covenanted for by established usage or by special contract. The law makes a distinction between a tenant for life and for a term of years; a tenant for life, or his representative, is entitled to the crops he has sown and not reaped, and which are growing at the time of his demise, because the time of expiry of his tenancy is contingent and uncertain, and not determined by his own act and deed, but by the frail tenure of human life. But a tenant on lease for a term of years or by a yearly holding at will, is not entitled to the crop unless contracted for, because the expiration of his term depends on a

certainty fixed and fully known to him. "Every one who has an uncertain estate or interest, if before severance of the corn his estate determine, either by the act of God or of the law, he shall have the emblements, or they shall go to the executor or administrator; and so it is in all cases regularly, where a man sows land, whereof and wherein he hath such an estate as may perhaps continue until the corn be ripe." (Williams's Farmer's Lawyer, page 193.)

This law, however, is only applicable to cases where no lease or agreement exists, containing stipulations of allowances to the quitting tenant; and though it appears that even in these cases the crop can be demanded by the strict letter of the law, it is always valued or given to the tenant; for the law of universal usage and understanding, and the agreements entered into for the special purpose of regulating such transactions, have long ago rendered unnecessary appeals to such absurd and con

tradictory enactments. If justice has stamped any one of its maxims more indelibly than another, it is this, "that he who sows shall reap, and that he who labours shall be paid ;" and the absurdity of a law that would deprive labour of its fruits remaining in force, and being intended as the last appeal, can only be accounted for by ranking it among the anomalies and contradictions every where found in the laws that have been enacted for the regulation of human affairs, and which are often opposed to justice and common sense. It is true that agreements supersede law; but it is certainly absurd enough to have law and practice completely at variance, when that practice is sanctioned by universal usage and by every maxim of justice and equity. The mischief that would accrue from the operation of such a law is evident; . cultivation could not go on, or would be most ruinously interrupted; and hence arose the necessity and the adoption of agree

ments on the subject, in correspondence with the advances made in the improvement of the art.

ON GRASS LANDS.

The portion of the farm left in grass at the term of quitting is often matter of dispute, in the absence of any stipulations on the subject. Some agreements enjoin one third, and others one fourth of the farm to remain in grass, and not to be ploughed or converted into tillage without a written leave from the landlord; while in the grazing counties, one half is prescribed, and on some poor soils as much as two thirds. If there be no written agreement, or if it be silent on this point, it is understood that the tenant must leave as much land in grass when he quits the farm, as he found when he entered upon it.

If the tenant ploughs any grass lands during his tenancy, or on quitting does not