APPENDIX. xxxi

paid by the landlord. The award is final and binding on all parties without appeal. The expenses could not exceed a few pounds. By this simple machinery, said Mr. Howe, every lease in the Island may be converted into freehold should the British Government, which I trust it will not, decline to guarantee a loan.

The process of arbitration was common in all our Courts. The people were familiar with it. There would of course be decisions as various as the localities, and the materials of which these simple tribunals were composed. But that could not be helped. The Commissioners would much have preferred s skilful valuer for the whole of the Island, but they had no power to appoint or pay such an officer, and it was quite clear that a valner appointed by the Govern. ment would not give satisfaction. There might be, under the system proposed. some eccentric valuations. A farm at one end of the Island may be valued too high, and one at the other too low, but, after all, the system was the best that could be devised, and no system was perfect. Tenants whose price was fixed by arbitration, would be entitled to a discount of 5 per cent for cash, and could pay by instal‘ .ments if they preferred that mode.

The Commissioners, for a time. clung to the belief that hey could fix some medium price, which could be applied 'to the whole Island. But they were compelled to abandon that idea. Some lands were worth $10 an acre, some were not worth 55. No medium price could have been fixed that ould not have worked frightful injustice. If fixed too ow the best properties would be sacrificed. If too high, he poorer class of tenants could not purchase at all.

As respected the arrears of rent, the Commissioners had een most anxious to act fairly between man and man. ery large arrears had accumulated on many of the estates. fter anxious deliberation, the Commissioners had decided o strike of all the arrears which had accrued prior to 858. This left to the landlord as much as in most cases 8 could ever collect, and it freed the tenant from a heavy urthen. Arrears of rent must of course be paid up be- ore the landlord was bound to sell, but the tenant would ave no dilliculty in borrowing what he wanted when his itle to the farm was confirmed by the transaction.

. Mr. Howe said he had seen it stated in the Examiner that roprietors and their agents had, since the appointment of he Land Commission, been exerting themselves by the ex- otion of judgment bonds, promissory notes, and other ee- urities from such of the tenants as were in arrears. That ight be the case, and the Commissioners might regret hat it was so, but they had no power to prevent them or