My own opinion is that the Wyndham Act would have been far more beneficial, if the Government had given the tenant a free grant of some of the purchase money, and insisted on his finding some more of it himself, whereby would have been created a deeper interest in his land than is now inspired in his breast by the mere transference of his lease from his old landlord to the Government.

I made this remark to an Englishman at the Carlton Club, and he said to me that, according to his view, England should lend whatever money was wanted but give no free grant.

I replied:—­

’A poor man from Kerry came to my house in London, and asked for the loan of a pound.  I declined to lend him the sovereign, but I did lend him half a crown, and as he bolted to America the very next day, I think I had the best of the bargain.’

My friend accepted the analogy and dropped the subject.

That was far more tactful on his part than the conduct of the English Government, for the different Acts of Parliament relating to Ireland have had the effect of rendering the feelings between landlord and tenant much worse than they were before.

And the Act of 1881, which provided that landlord and tenant should have a lawsuit every fifteen years, brought the feeling up to boiling pitch.

Now the Government inherits all this hatred by proposing to be the sole landlord in Ireland.  Therefore, England is reaping the whirlwind where Mr. Gladstone sowed the wind.

This does not appear to me to be sound statesmanship.  An open hatred of the Government has been instilled into the brain of thousands of Irish children side by side with a more hypocritical hatred of the landlord.  Now that these two are to be combined in one passion, and that directed against the receiver of rent, matters do not present a promising outlook.

If the Government sell up those tenants who do not pay rent in years to come, no Irish occupiers of the property will be obtainable.

If English tenants be imported, the latter had better insist on coats of mail for themselves, and on life insurance policies in favour of the nearest relatives they leave behind in England.

That reminds me of a story.

Sir Denis Fitzpatrick and his daughter were making a tour of the Kerry fjords some years ago, and the lady asked a boatman on Caragh Lake, what would happen to a tenant who took an evicted farm.

The reply was:—­

’I don’t think he’d do it again, Miss, leastways it’s in the next world alone he’d have the chance of making such a fool of himself.’

This may be commended to any unsophisticated English who contemplate Hibernian immigration as a prospective way of cheaply obtaining that once popular bait of Mr. Jesse Collins, three acres and a cow.

Here is another aspect of not paying rent to Government, which would occur to no one unacquainted with Ireland, but is quite characteristic:—­