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278 WILLIAMS' CASE.
and eighty yeans of age, ranges from forty-seven to six
years; any graduation of allowance in lieu of dower, to be correct,
should, at the latest, commence with fifteen years and extend as
far as eighty years of age. But the Chancery rule assumes, that
all lives, under thirty, are of the same value; and, commencing
with that age, has graduated the allowance from that period, at
intervals of five years, no further than seventy-seven years of age.
It is therefore, confessedly nothing more than an approximation
to truth; and is in this respect materially defective.
In England, and indeed, as it would seem, all over Europe, for
ft great length of time past, the most usual, or perhaps the only
method of coming at the fee simple value of land has been, first to
ascertain the fair rental value or price, by the year; and to multi-
ply that by the number of years purchase which the existing de-
mand for land will bear in the given situation at the time. The
ratio between the rental and the sale value of land, in England,
varies from twenty to forty years; that is, a parcel of land the fair
rental value of which is one hundred pounds, is worth, in common
cases, from two thousand to four thousand pounds. In England a
very large proportion of the lands are rented out by the fee simple
owners; and therefore, it may not be difficult there, in this mode,
to make an estimate of the fee simple value of any estate; either
from the rent of itself; or, by analogy, from the rent of other simi-
lar estates in its immediate vicinity. But here, more than nine-
tenths of the actual occupants and cultivators are also the owners
of the fee simple; and, hence resort cannot be so readily had, here
as in England, to the rental for the purpose of computing the fee
simple Take. But here, as in England, it appears, that so far as
the rent or annual price can be ascertained, the ratio between the
rental and the sale value ranges very wide; perhaps from fifteen
to thirty-five years purchase.
In the case now under consideration, it appears, that the land
actually sold for something more than twenty-six years purchase,
and was valued, by the commissioners, at more than twenty-nine
years purchase. This mode of estimating the value of property,
by so many years purchase, has been applied not only to life
estates and terms for years in land; but to annuities, terms for
years, and life interests of all kinds, (a) In all cases there is a
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(a) Rees Cyclo. v. Valuation of Lands; 1 Price Obser. 38, 200; 2 Spark's
Franklin, 326, 'Whatever a farm will sell for fixes its value as merchandise; but
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