To show how the Land Act works, on the Harenc estate I was offered twenty-seven years’ purchase before the Act for a holding, and at the time of the Commission they offered me sixteen years’ purchase on two-thirds of the rent.

One other Commission besides that of the Times remains to be mentioned.  Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a dour Scot with a lot of gumption in his head, was chairman of one on Imperial versus local taxation.  My easy task was to show the excess of the latter in Kerry, which is the highest taxed county in the three kingdoms.

When a man thinks of the vast amount of information buried beyond all probable excavation in the Blue Books of the last fifty years, he may well break into Carlyle-like diatribes against the waste of the whole thing—­which is paid for out of the taxpayer’s pocket.

Alluding to all these Commissions reminds me that there were three Land Commissioners—­Mr. Bewlay, who was very deaf; Mr. FitzGerald, who was rather hasty; and Mr. Wrench, who consistently absented himself to attend the Congested Board.

So they were respectively, though not respectfully, called, ’The judge who could not hear, the judge who would not hear, and the judge who is not here.’  This was one of the witticisms of my clever friend, Mr. Robert Martin—­’Bally-hooley’-one of the very few men who can write a good Irish song, and sing it well, into the bargain.

I appeared in the witness-box in the case of O’Donnell v. the Times.  I suppose people buy newspapers to obtain information, or else to get a pennyworth of lies to induce equanimity in bearing the income-tax, the weather, and all other ills that an unnatural Government is responsible for; and I further suppose a halfpenny paper has to condense its inaccuracies, and serve them up in tabloid form for mental indigestion.  However, that is as it may be; anyhow, I had a hearty laugh at the Star, which wrote:—­

’A look round the Court again this morning brought the strange impression which one now always feels on entering the Court.  The space is so comparatively small, but one feels as though it were all Ireland in microcosm.  You see representatives of every class in the terrible conflict of war, of rival passions, hatred, and traditions.  This man with the large nose, the large and disfigured face, is Mr. Hussey, and those scars that you see, and the distortion of the features, are perchance marks left by some desperate and homicidal tenant avenging his wrongs.’

That ‘perchance’ is good, considering my riding misadventure in County Cork, of which I gave an account earlier.