In the worst period Lord Derby received threats that if he did not reduce his rents, his agent would be murdered.

He coolly replied:—­

’If you think you will intimidate me by shooting my agent you are greatly mistaken.’

That is exactly the reply the agents desired the landlords to make, but it did not conduce to making their own existences any the more secure or enviable.

Of course in the due working out of the Wyndham Act, land agents will be utterly ruined.

There are no openings for them because they are too old to commence learning another profession, and they will not get employment under the County Council because they belong to the landlord class and have unflinchingly fought the battles of the landlords.

The agents are a class who have devoted their time and risked their lives in order to get in the rents due to their employers, and there is not the smallest chance—­save in a few isolated and exceptional cases—­of their being kept on when the landlords will have only their own demesne in their own hands and employ some underling, such as a bailiff in England, to collect the stray rents of the few cottagers who may still chance to be tenants.

Judge Ross stated that there was no more deserving or painstaking class in Ireland than the land agents, and he considered it a great hardship that under the Wyndham Act they obtain no compensation.

By agreement in most cases they receive three per cent. of the purchase money, but that is a very poor sinking fund to provide for a middle-aged gentleman, who has probably a family to support; and absolute bankruptcy must be the result if there is, as on several large properties, an agent with a couple of assistants.

When the Ashbourne Act was passed in 1885, it was never contemplated that the purchases would be on a wholesale scale.  As a matter of fact only a few estates were sold, and on the purchase price of one of those for which I was agent I received two per cent.  It should be also borne in mind that the profession of a land agent in Ireland is on a far higher social plane than in England.  In many cases the younger son or brother of the landlord is the agent for the family property; and in some instances this has worked uncommonly well.  In other cases, gentlemen by birth conducted the business, or else the administration of several estates was consolidated and carried on from one office.

In every case the billet was regarded as one for life, only forfeited by gross misconduct, and the relations between landlord and agent have been nearly always of an intimate and cordial character.  Each agent began as an assistant, obtaining an independent post by selection and influence, and few entered the profession unless they had reasonable prospects of a definite post on their own account in due course.

In my time the landlord was the sole judge of the agent’s qualifications, but the profession has become a branch of the Engineering Surveyor’s Institution.