'Now, could that value in the tenants, or that interest in the tenants, exist, unless the rents at which they were holding were low rents?--No, the prices of tenant right are incompatible with high rents. Does it in your opinion point to their being lower than the commercial rents?--Yes, they are lower.'[110] And will it be believed that on this very estate, in the case of thirteen farms, held at the rents fixed by the landlords, the tenant right realised L7296, and yet the Sub-Commission reduced the rents more than 20 per cent.? In other words, they declared that the old rents were not fair, though these lands, when transferred, fetched L7296 paid by their purchasers, subject to the rents in question![111] The Downshire was only one of many scores of estates in which the tenant right was exceedingly high, that is, the sums paid, at existing rents, on the transfer of farms, were very great, yet in all these instances this striking fact was not taken into account. It cannot cause surprise that, at a judicial inquiry held afterwards to review the subject, tenants' advocates endeavoured to exclude the evidence which, in the judgment of plain men of sense, affords almost a decisive indication as to whether given rents are 'fair.' It has been argued, however, that the price of tenant right, that is, the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on the sale of farms, at the current rents, ought to form no element in the fixing of 'fair rent;' it is only just to set forth the reasons. Mr. Bailey, the able legal Sub-Commissioner, referred to before, has explained them in this passage: 'Do you attend to tenant right in considering the fair rent?--No, we do not. The view we take of it is this. The tenant right paid for land is paid for something of an altogether different character from the rent of the land.... When a tenant sells his interest in his holding, he sells two things, first, the improvements on the holding, and secondly, his goodwill or share of the gross product of the holding.... When you put these two items together, viz. improvements and goodwill, it seems to me that the prices paid for tenant right are not at all remarkable. Then your view is that the price paid for tenant right throws no light on what the fair rent ought to be?--No, no light at all.' Mr. Bailey has added these significant words: 'The tenant does not buy at the rent which the tenement at present stands at, but he buys with a possible increase or reduction of the rent?--Quite so. And in latter years with the fall of prices he was buying with the expectation of a very considerable reduction?--Undoubtedly.'[112]