Renewing. Cowel. RENT (Lat. reditus, a return). A re- turn or compensation for the possession of some corporeal inheritance. A certain profit, either in money, provisions, or labor, issuing out of lands and tenements, in re- turn for their use. The compensation, either in money, pro- visions, chattels, or labor, received by the owner of the soil from the occupant there- of. Jacks. & Gross, Landl. & T. § 38; Woodf. Landl. & T. 375. The word "rents" in the bond of an admin- istrator is intended to apply to and embrace only such "rents" as at the death of an intes- tate passed to his personal representative and not to his heirs. 12 Bush (Ky.) 215. It has been held that a rent may issue out of lands and tenements corporeal, and also, out of them and their furniture, in this case a dairy farm with its stock and uten- sils; 31 Pa. 20; 99 id. 52. See, as to fur- nished lodgings, 5 B. & P. 224; 5 Co. 16 b. Some of its common-law properties are that it must be a profit to the proprietor, certain in its character, or capable of being reduced to a certainty, issuing yearly, that is, periodically, out of the thing granted, and not be part of the land or thing itself; Co. Litt. 47; 2 Bla. Com. 41. At common law there were three species of rent: rent service, where the tenant held his land by fealty, homage, or other cor- poral service and a certain rent to which the right of distress was necessarily in- cident; 3 Kent *461; 9 Watts 258; rent charge, which was a reservation of rent, with a clause authorizing its collection by distress; and rent seck, where there was no such clause, but the rent could only be collected by an ordinary action at law as by a writ of annuity or writ of assize. These distinctions, however, for all prac- tical purposes, have become obsolete, in consequence of various statutes both in England and in this country, allowing every kind of rent to be distrained for with- out distinction. See Tayl. Landl. & T. § 370; FEUDAL LAW. The payment of rent is incident to every tenancy where the relation of landlord and tenant subsists, except as to mere tenancies at will or by sufferance, where this relation cannot be said to exist. And no tenant can resist a demand for rent unless he shows that he has been evicted or become otherwise entitled to quit the premises, and has actually done so, before the rent in question became due. By the strictness of the common law, when a tenant has once made an agreement to pay rent, nothing will excuse him from continuing to pay, although the premises should be reduced to a ruinous condition by some unavoid- able accident of fire, flood, or tempest: 6 Mass. 63; 4 Harr. & J. 564: 72 Pa. 285: 39. Cal. 151; 3 Jolins. 44; 1 Term 310; 9 Price 294; 85 Ala. 99; 37 Ill. App. 542. See 72 Mich. 438. But this severity of the ancient law has been somewhat abated in this country, and in this respect conforms to the more reason- able provisions of the Code Napoléon, art. 1722, which declares that if the thing hired is destroyed by fortuitous events, during the continuance of the lease, the contract of hiring is rescinded, but if it be only destroyed in part, the lessee may, accord- ing to circumstances, demand either a diminution of the rent or a rescission of the contract itself. The same provision is to be found substantially in the Code of Louisiana, art. 2667, and in the act of the legislature of New York of 1860, c. 345, § 1. A somewhat similar provision is found in the laws of Minnesota: Laws 1883. c. 100; 47 Minn. 291. In South Carolina and Penn- sylvania it was decided that a tenant who had been dispossessed by a public enemy ought not to pay rent for the time the pos- session was withheld from him; and in Maryland it has been held that where a hurricane rendered a house untenantable it was a good defence to an action for rent. But these cases are evidently exceptions to the general rule of law above stated; 1 Bay 499; 5 Watts 517: 1 M'Cord 447. A tenant is not compelled to keep and pay rent for a house which, from defects in its construction, becomes untenantable and unfit for habitation; 73 Mich. 577. Where land has been swept away or gained upon by the sea, the lessee is no longer liable for rent; Bac. Abr. 63; Rolle, Abr. 236. The right of the lessor to terminate a lease for non-payment of rent will not give the lessee any right to avoid the lease or his liability for agreed rent; 150 U. S. 665. The quiet enjoyment of the premises, un- molested by the landlord, is an implied con- dition to the payment of rent. If, there- fore, he ousts the tenant from any consid- erable portion of the premises, or erects a nuisance of any description upon or so near to them as to oblige the tenant to remove, or if the possession of the land should be recovered by a third person, by a title superior to that of the landlord, the dispos- session in either case amounts to an evic- tion, and discharges the obligation to pay rent; 2 Ired. 350: 3 Harr. N. J. 364; 4 Leigh 484; 4 N. Y. 217; 1 M. & W