LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNErose to call the attention of the House, to report in "Times" of 6th instant, of Mr. Justice Field's statement in Queen's Bench (County Court Appeals),
That it was essential to the exercise of the right of appeal that the judge should take notes of the evidence, and state the facts proved and the points decided clearly and distinctly, so as to enable the Court to understand them;and to ask Her Majesty's Government, whether justice does not require that the commissioners and sub-commissioners under the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, should be guided by the same rules as are laid down by the learned judge for the guidance of county court judges in England? The noble Lord said, he only hoped that the principles enunciated from the Treasury Bench that evening would be carried out nearer home. He wished the Government could only find out some of those able men such as were connected with the North Borneo Company, who seemed to have ability to charm away crime in that savage country, and send them to Ireland. The remarks of Mr. Justice Field appeared to be so peculiarly applicable to many of the appeals which were being made from the Sub-Commissioners to the Commissioners under the Land Act, and also to appeals taken from the latter tribunal to the Court of Appeal, that he should be glad to hear from Her Majesty's Government an intimation of their willingness to call the attention of the Commissioners to the declaration of the learned Judge he had quoted from, with the object of securing to Irishmen interested in landed property the same principles which were applied in England, and without which the right of appeal given under the Land Act would become null and void. It was plain that as many of the Sub-Commissioners were only appointed by the year, that the Government could influence, if not direct, them; and it was at least probable that the Commissioners would attend to suggestions from the Government that their Courts and the Courts of their deputies should be carried on under such rules as would enable the rights of appeal given under the Act to be available. The real point involved in the question was this—were Her 726 Majesty's subjects in Ireland not only to live under laws entirely different from those which were enforced in Great Britain, but whether the laws themselves, exceptional and strange as they were, were to be administered by a new and untried tribunal in a manner so loose and uncontrolled as would not, according to the decision of an English Judge, be accepted in the administration of the law in this part of the United Kingdom?
§ LORD CARLINGFORDsaid, that when he saw the noble Lord's Question on the Paper he was rather surprised that such a Question should be put, and he wondered what the facts were which had caused him so much anxiety; but having inquired into the matter, he thought he should be able to relieve the noble Lord of the anxiety which he felt. On making inquiries, he found that the fact was, as regards the Sub-Commissioners, that the legal Commissioner took notes of the substance of the evidence given before him. He believed, however, that those notes, in cases of fixing fair rents, were not important elements in the decision of the Land Commission when an appeal was heard. The so-called appeals were, in the words of the Land Act, "re-hearings by the Land Commission," which heard the vivâ voce evidence fully, and employed its own valuer to value the land for its own purposes. The noble Lord would therefore see that the notes of the legal Commissioner were comparatively unimportant. But when a point of law was reserved by the Sub-Commission, the Land Commission was furnished with a full report of the facts and the evidence on which the question arose. The Land Commission itself, from which, of course, an appeal in the strict sense of the word, lay to the Court of Appeal in Ireland, always employed a shorthand writer, and all the evidence and the proceedings before them were taken down in full for the use of the Court of Appeal, if there should be an appeal; and when that was the state of the case the noble Lord would see that the admonition which he desired to give to the Land Courts in Ireland was quite unnecessary. No one could be more interested than the Land Commission itself in having appeals or re-hearings brought before it in a proper and convenient way, and they had no reason to complain in that 727 respect of the proceedings of the Sub-Commissions. In appeals from the chief tribunal itself, the Court of Appeal before which the cases were taken was furnished with full means of considering the questions submitted to it.
LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNEsaid, that in the only appeal which had been taken from the Land Commission to the Court of Appeal the facts were insufficiently explained, and the Court had a difficulty in arriving at any decision in consequence. In disposing of the appeals which had come from the Sub-Commission, Mr. Justice O'Hagan stated that it was only on points of law they were disposed to change the decisions of the tribunal, and that they could not go into details as to the value of the holdings.
§ LORD CARLINGFORDsaid, it was true that one of the Judges in the Court of Appeal did criticize the form in which the case of Adams v. Dunseath was brought before them; but he (Lord Carlingford) believed there was no reason to question the great pains taken by the Land Commission in bringing that case before the Appeal Court. The case of Adams v. Dunseath, as submitted to the Court of Appeal, was drawn up with the full consent and concurrence of the solicitors and counsel on both sides, and especially with the concurrence and to the satisfaction of the eminent counsel, Mr. Holmes, the Solicitor General for Ireland under the late Government, who raised the question on the part of the landlord.