[93] The nature and character of these two classes of evidence has been thus well described in the Report of the Edward Fry’s Commission, p. 18: ‘If the matter were perfectly open, it appears to us that two independent lines of evidence might be pursued by a person inquiring what is the fair rent to be fixed for a holding. One class of evidence may for shortness be called the popular evidence; the other the technical. The popular evidence would comprise the prices obtained by the tenant for a sale of his interest or bonâ fide offers which he had received for it, evidence of the letting value or judicial rents of similar holdings, evidence of the sums paid for conacre or agistment, evidence of the long and punctual payment of a real rent, or of the long arrears of a nominal rent, and evidence of the prosperity or poverty of the persons who had successively lived off the produce of the holding. The technical evidence would be that more familiar to professional valuators. They would inspect the land, ascertain the acreages of the different classes of land on the farm, and what they would produce or carry; they would consider the quantity and value of the produce and the cost of production, and the shares of the surplus remaining after the cost of production divisible between landlord and tenant respectively. The popular evidence would be affected by all the motives which make men in Ireland desirous to occupy land; the technical evidence would assume the desire of making a money profit out of the occupation of land as the sole motive of such occupation. The eighth section of the Act of 1881 seems to admit of both lines of evidence with a single exception. It provided that in fixing the fair rent consideration should be given not to some but to all the circumstances of the case, the holding and the district, with the single exception that (sub-sec. 10) the price paid for the tenancy otherwise than to the landlord or his predecessors was not of itself, apart from other considerations, to be taken into account; though, conjoined with other considerations, it still remains admissible.’
[94] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 13.
[95] Ibid., p. 14: ‘Some specific charges of misconduct or negligence have been made against lay Assistant Commissioners and Court valuers; as e.g. visiting the land without due notice to the landlord; visiting the holding when lying under snow or water, or when suffering from prolonged drought, and refusing to wait whilst a trench was dug to show the condition of the alleged drainage. We have investigated many of these cases, and the explanations given have generally been satisfactory to us.’
[96] Evidence taken by Mr. Morley’s Commission on the Irish Land Acts, p. 236.
[97] Ibid., p. 397.
[98] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 131.
[99] Ibid., p. 208.
[100] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 41.
[101] Ibid., p. 682.
[102] ‘Democracy and Liberty,’ vol. i. pp. 205, 206.