powers over the area within which they were to operate.  They were empowered to take such steps as they thought proper for (1) Aiding migration or emigration from the congested districts, and settling the migrant or emigrant in his new home; and (2) Aiding and developing agriculture, forestry, and breeding of live stock and poultry, weaving, spinning, fishing (including the construction of piers and harbours, and supplying fishing boats and gear and industries subservient to and connected with fishing), and any other suitable industries.  Both the powers and the revenues of the Board were increased from time to time, until by 1909 its annual expenditure amounted to nearly L250,000.  It became clear almost at the beginning of its labours that amongst the many difficulties which the Board would have to face there were two pre-eminent ones; if it was desired to enlarge uneconomic holdings by removing a part of the population to other districts, the people to be removed might not wish to go; and the landless men in the district to which they were to be removed might say that they had a better right to the land than strangers from a distance, and the result might be a free fight.  As the only chance of success for the labours of the Board was the elimination of party politics, Mr. J. Morley, on becoming Chief Secretary in the Gladstonian Government of 1892, appointed as Commissioners Bishop O’Donnell of Raphoe (the Patron of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and a Trustee of the Parliamentary Fund of the United Irish League); and the Rev. D. O’Hara, a leading Clerical Nationalist of a violent type.  It is needless to say that under their influence the action of the Board has been conducted on strictly Nationalist lines.  One instance may suffice.  In 1900, the Board, having come into the possession of the Dillon estate, wished to sell it to the tenants; and when doing so, considering the sporting rights to be a valuable asset, decided to reserve them.  A considerable number of the tenants expressed their readiness to purchase their holdings subject to the reservation.  The Board received an offer of L11,000 for the mansion, demesne and sporting rights over the estate.  The reservation of sporting rights when, taking the whole estate, they were of pecuniary value, had been the common practice of the Board in other sales; but an agitation was at once got up (not by the tenants) against the reservation in this case, on the ground that it was not right for the Board to place any burden on the fee simple of the holdings; the offer of L11,000 was refused, and soon afterwards the Board sold the mansion and the best part of the demesne to a community of Belgian nuns for L2,100.  The sporting rights, which became the property of the purchasing tenants, ceased to be of any appreciable pecuniary value, though in a few cases the tenants succeeded in selling their share of them for small sums to local agitators.  When a witness before the Royal Commission of 1906 ventured to point out that the taxpayers thus lost L8,900 by the transaction, he was severely rebuked by the Clerical members of the Commission for suggesting that the presence of the Belgian nuns was not a great benefit to the neighbourhood.