I also pointed out that there were then 300,000 occupiers of land in Ireland, whose holdings were under L8 Poor Law valuation, and these occupiers when their potatoes failed had nothing but relief works, starvation, or emigration.  To give them their whole rent would not meet the difficulty.

I submitted a scheme of purchase, in which Baron Dowse was greatly interested, and I suggested that all holdings under L4 a year should be ejected at Petty Sessions, because it was a great hardship for the tenant of such a holding to have L2, 10s. costs put upon him.

I ended with:—­

’There is a case in this county in connection with which there is likely to be very considerable disturbance.  A man had a farm put up for sale and a Nationalist bought it at a very low figure, on the understanding that he was to keep it for the man’s family; but as soon as he got it he turned Conservative and kept it.’

  BARON DOWSE—­’Turned what?’

  MYSELF—­’Conservative.’

  BARON DOWSE—­’Rogue, I would say.  You would not say that Conservatives
  are rogues?’

Since that was a debatable point on which the Commission had no jurisdiction to inquire, I returned no answer.

As the distress was alluded to above, I may lighten the recent seriousness of my observations by an anecdote on the topic.

In 1880 the Duchess of Marlborough organised a fund for supplying the people with meal.  The Dublin Mansion House did the same, but their meal was of a coarser description.

A Blasquet Islander was asked how he was getting on, and made answer:—­

’Illigant, glory be to the Saints.  We’re eating the Duchess, and feeding two pigs on the Mansion House.’

This recalls the story of the Englishman who inquired of a Kerry man which measure of English legislation had proved most beneficial for Ireland.

‘The Famine (of 1879) was the best, beyond a shadow of doubt,’ was the reply, ’for I fattened and sold ninety fine turkeys on the strength of it.’

In 1880 some Kerry men did a very good stroke of business.  They sent a cargo of potatoes from Killorglin to Scotland and brought them back as imported Champion seed, selling them for six times the original price.

About this period Mr. Leeson-Marshall, who had been away from Kerry and coming back found some cottages near Milltown still only half built, observed:—­

‘Good God, aren’t those houses finished yet?’

‘Well, sor,’ was the reply, ’the contract’s finished but the houses aren’t.’

And it has been my life-long experience that ninety-five per cent, of all the penalties in contracts are worthless, as the contractors themselves are only too well aware.

Being a land agent, I wish to provide some account from another pen of my stewardship, for which said stewardship I was falsely called ’the most rack-renting agent in Ireland.’