LODGERS' PROPERTY PROTECTION BILL—(No. 65.)—SECOND READING. (Hansard, 11 May 1869)

THE MARQUESS TOWNSHEND

, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, its object was to protect lodgers from the seizure of their property in case of default in payment of rent by the tenant. The equitable rights of the landlord would be placed in no jeopardy by the operation of the Bill. If the landlord was careless enough to let his property to bad tenants, he had no claim to consideration, and was not entitled to shift the burden on to the shoulders of the innocent lodger. The proper security for a landlord was the solvency and respectability of his tenant; and if he did not exercise sufficient caution on this head, he ought not to make the lodger suffer for circumstances entirely beyond his control. It was true that the lodger and the superior landlord could enter into an agreement; but the latter had no inducement to take this course; and the lodger was not always able to ascertain who the superior landlord was. A tenant was now able to send part of his goods to a place of security, knowing that the landlord would come upon the lodger's effects to make up the deficiency, and the applications which were 563 constantly made at the police courts on this subject proved how harshly the law operated. Provision was made in the Bill to prevent possible collusion between the tenant and his lodger to defraud the landlord of his rights in respect to the tenant's furniture, by requiring the lodger to satisfy a justice of the peace for an order to protect his property against distraint by the superior landlord; and the justice, on being satisfied that the goods were the goods of the lodger, was to give a protection order, which was to be registered with the registrar of the Comity Court.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

said, he had no doubt of the noble Marquess' benevolent intentions towards persons who suffered great inconvenience from a seizure of their furniture for rent due to the superior landlord. A right, however, which had been vested in the landlord from the remotest times as a security for his rent ought not to be lightly interfered with. But the Bill afforded no security against the grossest frauds being practised on the landlord. It proposed that the lodger might obtain a certificate from a magistrate that the property belonged to him, and that on this certificate being registered the property should be protected from the superior landlord. A compact would obviously be made in many cases between the lodger and his immediate landlord, who of course did not wish his goods to be seized, by which the furniture of the latter would be represented as the property of the lodger: and thus the security held by the superior landlord would be altogether defeated. It might or might not be that the Law of Distress sometimes pressed heavily on lodgers; but the remedy for this would be a remodelling or abolition of the power of distress, and the House could not be reasonably asked to assent to this Bill.