What amount of the rental of Ireland was unlawfully cut down owing to the theory of 'occupation right,' it is, of course, impossible to ascertain. Reductions of rent, too, were probably unjustly made through the ignorance of the Land Commission as to agricultural matters. I refer to a grotesque instance of this: 'You have marked a passage there in the judgment, which, according to you, shows that owing to their ignorance as experts they entirely mistook what six-course rotation meant?--Yes. The fact is they took it to be the same crop in the whole seventy acres, that instead of having so many different crops in this portion of the ground, it was to be put into one crop for the year, and that is what they call "rotation" in the Court of Rehearing.... It is plain enough, from the authorised report of the judgment, that they made that mistake?--It is clear as possible, and it was upon that that they threw me out. The tenant himself knew that it was all absurdity and mistake.'[129]
A remarkable incident occurred in 1897 which threw a strong, if not a complete, light on the proceedings of the Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions in the adjustment of rent. In 1896 the time had come for renewing the first statutory leases, under the Act of 1881; the Commissioners suddenly made such enormous reductions of rent that persons who knew Ireland were simply astounded. The Irish landlords naturally were indignant; after some hesitation, and with plain reluctance, the Government gave its consent to a very imperfect inquiry. A Commission, presided over by Sir Edward Fry, a judge of the highest eminence, retired from office, and composed of four additional colleagues, two being well-known agricultural experts, was appointed to investigate the subject on the spot; but the scope of the inquiry was limited in the extreme; it was confined, in this respect, to examining the procedure and practice adopted in fixing 'fair rents;' it did not extend to the conduct generally of the Land Commission and its dependent tribunals. The Commission was engaged nearly three months in its task; it held its sittings in different parts of Ireland; it had before it 183 witnesses; and restricted as it was in this province, it pronounced, in grave and judicial language, a marked censure on the methods that had been followed in fixing 'fair rents' in Ireland. In fact, Sir Edward Fry and his colleagues confirmed, in many respects, the charges which I have made with regard to this whole system. No doubt they reported, in very guarded words, 'that they were unable to conclude that the machinery of the Land Statutes has been uniformly worked with injustice towards landlords;'[130] but as they pointedly refused to rehear a single case, in which the Land Commission and the Sub-Commissions had fixed a 'fair rent,' this statement, ambiguous as it is, is of no real importance. In other particulars the expression of these opinions cannot be mistaken; to impartial minds it will appear decisive. They evidently thought that such wrong had been done to landlords owing to the want of a definition of 'fair rent,' that they actually framed a definition of their own, in order to establish some kind of standard; this did not widely differ from that of Mr. Law, which, I have said, would have made things very different had it been adopted.[131] They pointed out that the Land Commissioners should have assisted the Sub-Commissions in fixing 'fair rents,' and should not have left them 'like ships without a rudder or a compass on a stormy sea;' it is 'a subject of regret,' they reported, 'that in the early days of the system the Land Commissioners were unable to take a part in the tribunals of first instance; and that the whole original business was left to Sub-Commissions.'[132] They strongly condemned the nature of the Sub-Commission Courts, as being composed of members inadequately paid and mere tenants at sufferance; and they put forward an elaborate scheme to make the administration of justice in these tribunals more above suspicion.[133] They evidently believed that the Land Commission and the Sub-Commissions did not give due weight to the class of evidence that was most important, and gave too much weight to that which was the least; and they made significant observations on this subject.[134] On the whole, they arrived at the conclusion that the fixing of 'fair rents' 'gives opportunity for dissatisfaction, and leaves much more for improvement; ...