120 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND - iHSCELLANEOUS 



1. The landlord and tenant might come to an agreement for a fair 

 rer^ outside the Com"t, which rent, when the agreement was filed in Court, 

 would become the judicial rent. 



2. The landlord and tenant might have a rent fixed by the award 

 of valuers named by the Land Commission, which rent would be sub- 

 sequently inserted in a formal agreement and filed as the judicial rent, or 



3. They might refer the amount of rent to be paid to the decision of 

 an Arbitration Court consisting of two arbitrators and an umpire in the man- 

 ner provided for in the Act of 1870 for the purposes of that Act. 



There have been only 40 fair rents fixed by arbitration since the Act 

 of 1 881, and only 2,242 by the award of valuers, so these two methods of 

 fixing fair rents are really negligible. Over 160,000 first fair rents have 

 been fixed by agreement, but of course these agreements throw no light on 

 the question of the principles involved in fixing fair rents where the parties 

 cannot come to terms. Of those latter cases the vast majority have been 

 fijced by the Land Commission. The following table shows the number 

 of fair rents fixed for a first term from the passing of the Act of 1881 to the 

 31st. March, 1913 by the various methods mentioned above : 



Land Commission 198,211 (i) 



Civil Bill Court 21,597 (i) 



Agreement . . / 160,268 



Arbitrators 40 



§ 6. The absence of generai, principIvEs of vai,uation. 



The procedure of the Land Commission, which is perhaps the greatest 

 rent fixing body in existence, is therefore of paramount importance in any 

 discussion on the subject of fixing fair rents compulsorily. But the first 

 thing we find when we examine their procedure is that they have never 

 laid down any instructions or any general principles for the guidance of 

 their Sub-Commissioners. Their action or inaction was deliberate, for in 

 the Appendix to their Second Annual Report, replying to an attack made 

 upon them by a Committee of the House of Lords, the Commissioners state 

 they " gave no instructions on this subject to the Assistant Commissioners 

 and to this moment they are absolutely at a loss to conceive what instructions 

 they could legally have given beyond reading to them the terms of the Act 

 of Parliament. " 



It would have been a very difficult task for the Commissioners to have 

 drawn up instructions for their Assistant Commissioners, especially in 

 view of the fact that the Act itself gave them no assistance on the subject. 

 Moreover Sir R. Griffiths had issued elaborate instructions to his valuers 

 when carrying out the valuation of Ireland, and had utterly failed to secure 



(i) These figures include 2,242 fair rents fixed on valuers' reports. 



