Sir Edward Fry’s Commission had none of the tinsel of big names nor the tawdriness of aristocratic apathy.  Sir Edward meant to find the truth, and so did his colleagues—­all practical men.  What they did was to strike against the hard rock of party government which was too adamant to receive the evidence sown by these gardeners.  Dr. Anthony Traill, who was one of the Commissioners, has in this very year of grace been made Provost of Trinity, and from what I saw of him I am certain he will be the apostle of fair play between undergraduates and dons.

I answered over five hundred questions and rammed home one or two points.  For instance, I expressed my disapproval of a system by which a man who is a sub-Commissioner at the hearing on the first term may become the Court valuer on the next.

In valuation, it is wrong that men from the north should be sent to value in the south, or vice versa, and to prove that I cited the example of my tenant, Anne Delane.  Her rent was fixed first term in 1883 for L34, 10s.  In 1896, for second term, the sub-Commissioner fixed it at L23, 10s., and on appeal it was raised to L25.  Mr. O’Shaughnessy, who was one of the sub-Commissioners on the first term, acted as a Court valuer on the second.  On the first time he allowed L103, 6s. 9d. for drains and buildings, and on the second omitted it.

In the case of Hoffman, who held a farm at a rent of L30, I reduced it to L20 in 1881.  In 1896 he went into court, and the County Court judge reduced it to L15, and on appeal he got it again reduced to L13.

On land which came into my own hands after 1881, I was able to get rents over 50 per cent. in excess of those fixed by the sub-Commissioners.  In the case of Patrick Quill, the farm on which the rent was cut down from L20 to L16 was sold for L300 with a charge of L9 on it.

In the case of Michael Callaghan, Colonel Hickson expended L300 and Callaghan L100 on the farm, for which the rent was L70, and he sold his interest for L700.

This perpetual wrangling and litigation is ruinous, for every man is farming down his land and letting it deteriorate as fast as he can; and there is a most marked difference in the county between those who have bought their land and those who are tenants.  When a judicial rent was fixed and a tenant came into Court for a second judicial rent, I think the landlord should have been at liberty to stop him by tendering the farmer twenty years’ purchase; that would give him a reduction of 20 per cent, and make him a proprietor in the course of time.

In 1850 at Milltown Fair, yearlings were selling for 30s. apiece.  The same cattle now are selling for L5, and Kerry is a great stock-breeding country.

It is very hard to define a landlord, and you will hear of some being landlords who do not get a shilling from their estates.  Under these circumstances they would be like the fox in AEsop’s fable who had lost his own tail.