These are grave charges against quasi-judicial bodies; let us see if they are not completely justified. The Sub-Commissioners, I have said, have taken no heed of Mr. Law's definition of 'fair rent;' but they have acted as though they set it at defiance; they have ignored the principle of competition in fixing 'fair' rents. Unquestionably, as Mr. Law pointed out, a deduction should be made from a competition rent, regard being had to 'the tenant's interest,' that is, to his rights in respect of improvements, and perhaps to his rights on account of his tenure, a lease renewable every fifteen years, when a 'fair rent' is being fixed on his farm; but why the very idea of competition, that is, of market value, was to be excluded as an element in estimating 'fair rent,' is what men of common sense have never understood. This, in fact, was a portentous mistake, with consequences of a far-reaching kind; you might as well argue that because two partners had an interest in a fee simple estate, or two peasants had each a share in a cow, the price of the land or the cow was not to depend on what would be given for it at an auction mart or a county fair. Yet this was a position the Sub-Commissions have always taken; they have always insisted that competition had nothing to do with 'fair rent.' The evidence on this subject is conclusive; I can only take a few samples from the statements of a cloud of witnesses, who really seem to make a boast of their faith. Colonel Bayley, a Sub-Commissioner of large experience, has laid it down that the 'difference between a competition rent and the fair rent would be more than 20 per cent.; it would, I think, be more than that; there would be between 30 and 75 per cent. difference between the fair rent and the competition rent.'[96] Mr. Roberts, another Sub-Commissioner, has deposed to much the same effect: 'Decidedly, I believe that if the land was put in the market it would bring 25 per cent. more than the rent I put on.'[97] So, too, Mr. Bailey, a legal Sub-Commissioner, very much respected, has alleged: 'It would be most misleading to take the evidence of letting value in the neighbourhood, thus bringing in competition value, which we rigorously exclude in fair-rent cases.'[98] Mr. Bomford, a well-known Sub-Commissioner, has said, in much the same sense: 'We do not take the competition rent, and cannot take it into consideration, when fixing what the fair rent should be. Then you utterly exclude, when you come to the fixing of the fair rent, the element of competition?--Yes, except in one matter, when we have town parks.'[99]