§ MR. MACFARLANE (for Mr. GRAY)asked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland for the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Whether his attention has been called to the Reports of cases decided by the Irish Land Commission, reported by the official reporters to the Commissioners, Messrs. Cecil E. Roche and Luke Dillon, barristers-at-law, Part I. for November 1881, in which is given the address of Mr. Justice O'Hagan on the opening of the Land Commission on the 20th October 1881, and to the fact that from that address is omitted the following passage from the address actually delivered by Mr. Justice O'Hagan on the occasion, as to the principle on which the Courts would fix a fair judicial rent, that is to say, that the rent should be
A rent which might he fairly paid, and yet permit tenants, not deficient in those qualities of industry and prudence which are expected in any walk of life to live and thrive;and, whether he can state how this dictum of Mr. Justice O'Hagan came to be omitted from the Report of the official reporters to the Commission?
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)The Chief Secretary was not aware until recently of the existence of these Reports. The more important judgments which are published in them are revised, as is customary, by the Judges, and that fact is stated in the title of each reported case which is so revised. In the introduction to the first part of these Reports, the reporters published so much of the observations of Judge O'Hagan at the opening of the Court of the Land Commission on matters of practice as the reporters considered requisite. The learned Judge has informed me that this introduction was not submitted to him for revision, or revised by him, nor until this matter was mooted did he even read the introduction. He was, therefore, not aware of the omission referred to in the Question, and was quite under the impression that the introduction reproduced verbatim what he had actually said.