and I further laid before the Commission a purchase scheme.  There would be twenty years’ purchase-money to be lent by the State, two years’ purchase to be found by the tenant and two years more at the end of ten years.  Thus the landlord would get a price for his property that would induce him to sell (reductions had not then been wholesale) and the tenant would get a lease for ever with abolition of rent at the end of thirty-five years by paying a fine of two years’ rent down and two more at the end of ten years.

They would not have it.  Who ever expected that Justice would lift the bandage from her eyes for the sake of fair play to the landlord?

Lord Salisbury had a Commission on the working of the Land Act of 1881.  Lord Dunraven, Lord Pembroke, and Lord Cairns were on it, the latter being chairman.  He was so austere that, when he was made Lord Chancellor, it was said he had swallowed the mace and could not digest it.  His law may have been profound, but it was never relieved by a gleam of humour, and his ecclesiastical proclivities were of the lowest Church type.  For some time he nominated Tory bishops, and it was declared he was so evangelical that he would have suggested any clergyman for a vacant bishopric who promised to forego the ecclesiastical gaiters.  His horror of Anthony Trollope’s novels was notorious, especially his dislike of Mrs. Proudie and her attendant divines.

I said the working of the Land Act was ruin to Irish landlords, and cited a case.  A Kerry gentleman had an estate of L1200 rent roll, with a mortgage of L8000 which involved charges of L400 a year, a jointure tithes and head rent took L400 more.  The Commissioners by so cutting down the rent by L400 made a clean sweep of what that landlord had to live on.  Fortunately, he had his mother’s fortune of L40,000, which his grandfather had wisely provided should not be invested in Irish lands, having, in fact, established a contingency in case his grandson should be dispossessed of the property he had held for generations, by a Government truckling to blustering ‘no-renters.’

Before Lord Cowper’s Commission on the same subject, I said much the same thing over again and realised that Royal Commissions are most valuable for the purpose of shelving pregnant topics.  The only good derived from these official inquiries is that the witnesses get their expenses and the Government printers have a lucrative contract.

There is a story told of a witness who was being brought over to London to give evidence.

‘Patrick,’ said the priest, ’you’ll be having to mind what you’re saying over there.  Perjury won’t help you no more than I can, my poor fellow.’

‘What happens if I get a bit wide of the truth then, father?’

‘You won’t get your expenses, my son.’

’Holy Mother, to think of that!  I’ll be so careful that I won’t know how many legs the blessed pig has that’s round the cabin all day long.’