DISTRAINING FOR RENT.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 148, 8 June 1936, Page 6

DISTRAINING FOR RENT.

Whatever exception may be taken, to some of tne provisions of the f air Kents Bill produced by the Minister of Justice, there win be very little with regard to his proposed amendment of the law of distress for rent. Although the law of the long past giving the landlord a special means of recovering his rent has already been considerably modified, it can still be made to operate harshly and unjustly. Even in its present form it is, as the Minister said, a relic of the feudal days, when the rights of the land-owner were regarded as something sacro-sanct. The time has come, however, when this idea of special privilege should be abolished and the landlord left to recover his rent in much the same way as other creditors with respect to trade and other debts. There may be fair reason for giving the landlord, as has been done, some limited preference in respect of his rent in cases of bankruptcy, but it is difficult to see why he should, in other circumstances, be clothed with rights which are peculiar to himself and may be exercised summarily and arbitrarily. This, of course, has nothing to say as to his right of recovering possession of his property, for there is no good reason •why he, any more than another creditor, should be compelled to allow the debt to increase indefinitely. Probably there will be none to whom the change in the law will be more welcome than to the better-class lawyer, to whom the exercise for his clients of the right of distress has in very many cases been an extremely distasteful duly that he could not very well escape.