Mr. Isaac Colhoun, at the meeting referred to, produced from the accounts of the society for the previous year, published in the local papers, the following items:—­

L s. d. 
Amount of the present increased income 11,091 17 5
________________
Incidental expenses as per general agents’ account
for 1865 114 3 0-1/2
Law expenses 492 7 11 Salaries to general agent, deputy, vice-admiral,
surveyor, and others 926 16 6
Pension to general agent 250 0 0 Visitation expenses, 1865 539 19 6 Surveying expenses 50 0 0 Salary of clerk and porter’s wages 197 10 0 Coal, gas, printing, stationery, advertisements 449 11 5 Salary to secretary and assistant governor, and
‘assistants’ for attendance at 51 meetings 549 1 6
________________
4,094 1 6

Here, then, is a trust fund amounting to about 12,000 l. a year, and the trustees actually spend one-third in its management!  And what is its management?  What do they do with the money?  Mr. Pitt Skipton, D.L., a landed proprietor, who has nothing to gain or lose by the Irish Society, asks, ’Where is our money laid out now?  Not on the estate of the Irish Society, but on the estates of the church and private individuals—­on those of owners like myself who give their tenants perpetuity, because it is their interest to do so.  We should wish to see the funds of the society so expended that we could see some memorial of them.  But where is there in Derry any monument wholly erected by the society which they were not specially forced to put up by charter, with the exception of a paltry piece of freestone within one of the bastions bearing their own arms.’

Let us only imagine what the corporation of Derry could do in local improvements with this 12,000 l. a year, which is really their own property, or even with the 4,000 l. a-year squandered upon themselves by the trustees!  Some of these worthy London merchants, it seems, play the role of Irish landlords when travelling on the Continent, on the strength of this Derry estate, or their assistantship in its management.  ‘I object,’ says Mr. J.P.  Hamilton, ’if I take a little run in the summer vacation to Paris or Brussels, to meet a greasy-looking gentleman from Whitechapel or the Minories, turned out sleek and shining from Moses’, and to be told by him that he has a large property in Hireland, in a place called Derry, and that his tenantry are an industrious, thriving set of fellows, quite remarkable for their intelligence, but that it is all owing to his excellent management of his property and his liberality.’