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9
finding out the value, which is laid down in the Act of Parliament.
You are to find out the annual rent which a tenant (not the tenant who
is to be rated) might reasonably be expected, taking one year with
another, to pay for a hereditament, that is to pay for the hereditament,
and this is to be applied, mind, where the person to be rented is only a
tenant occupying, and it is also to be applied where the person to be
rated is the owner in occupation, and not a tenant at all, and where
there is no tenant at all. If you are to find out the annual rent which
a tenant might reasonably be expected, taking one year with another,
to pay for a hereditament, it seems to me to be equivalent to saying
that you must look at all possible tenants, hypothetical tenants, and all
tenants within bounds of reason, to find out what a tenant might
reasonably be expected to pay. The very phraseology of the thing
does not exclude any tenant, and it does not exclude, therefore, the
consideration of the tenant, if there is one, who is in actual occupation,
and if the owner is the person who is in actual occupation, it does not
exclude the consideration of that very person possibly being a person
who might be a tenant. A School Board may be a tenant; if you have
got somebody which by statute never could be a tenant at all, that body
naturally could not be brought into the question of what a tenant could
give, but the moment you get a body which can be a tenant, you have
no right to exclude that body as a hypothetical tenant more than any
other. If it had been true to say, that by the Act of Parliament which
constituted School Boards they never could be tenants, then I think
you would have excluded the consideration of them as possible tenants.
But that is not so. A School Board can be a tenant of a building for
the purpose of a School; therefore they ought not to be rejected.
Then it was said that a School Board can obtain no beneficial
interest from a tenancy: be it so, and, as I understand it, therefore
they never possibly would be asking to be a tenant. That is true in
one sense, but they are a body which have a duty to perform which
may induce them sometimes, and in some cases must force them, to be
tenants. Therefore you cannot say as a matter of law, that because
they will not obtain any benefit from the tenancy, therefore it is
impossible to suggest that they ever can be tenants. They have a duty
to perform which would induce them under certain circumstances, and
in others force them, to be tenants. Therefore they are a possible
tenant, and if they are a possible tenant they cannot be excluded from
the question of what a tenant might reasonably be expected to give.
It follows, therefore, in my opinion, from what I have said, that it
would be wrong to exclude a School Board from the list of possible
hypothetical tenants, and that it would be wrong to exclude a School
Board which is about to be rated whether it is in fact a tenant
occupying or whether it is in fact an owner in occupation. In either