candidate.  The contest was not political; it was simply the independence of the borough against the office.  Dean Stannus, as agent to an absentee landlord, was the most powerful personage in the place, virtually the lord of the manor.  Before the election that gentleman published a letter in a Belfast paper contradicting a statement that had appeared to the effect that Lord Hertfort took little interest in the approaching contest, in which letter he said:  ’I have the best reason for knowing that his lordship views with intense interest what is passing here, and that he is most anxious for the return of Mr. Inglis, feeling that the election of such a representative (which I am now enabled to say is certain) will do much credit to the borough of Lisburn, and that this unmeaning contest will, at all events, among its other effects, prove to his lordship whom he may regard as his true friends in his future relations with this town.’

Notwithstanding this warning, so significantly emphasized, the candidate whom the voters selected as their real representative was returned.  Now no one can blame the marquis or his agent for wishing that the choice had fallen upon Mr. Inglis.  So far as politics were concerned, the contest was unmeaning; but so far as the rights of the people and the loyal working of the British constitution were concerned, the contest was full of meaning, and if the landlord and his agent respected the constitution more than their own personal power they would have frankly acquiesced in the result, feeling that this Protestant and Conservative constituency had conscientiously done its duty to the state.  But who could have imagined, after all the solemnly recorded pledges I have quoted, that they would have instantly resolved to punish the independent exercise of the franchise by inflicting an enormous and crushing fine amounting to nothing less than the whole tenant-right property of every adverse voter who had not a lease!  Immediately after the election ‘notices to quit’ were served upon every one of them.  In consequence of this outrageous proceeding a public meeting was held, at which a letter from John Millar, Esq., a most respectable and wealthy man (who was unable to attend) was read by the secretary.  He said:  ’I have at various times purchased places held from year to year, relying on the custom of the country, and on the declared determination of the landlord and his agent to respect such customary rights of property, for the continued possession of it.  I have besides taken under the same landlord several fields as town parks, which were in very bad order.  These fields I have drained and very much improved.  I have always punctually paid the rent charged for the several holdings, and, I think I may venture to say, performed all the duties of a good tenant.  At the last election, however, I exercised my right as a citizen of a free country, by giving my votes at Hillsborough and Lisburn in favour of the