To be sure, if the County Court valuer had not done so, he would have quickly lost his employment.  The position is one incompatible with honesty, and the value of land, apart from what you can get for it, is a very disputable matter.

My relations with my Harenc tenantry were always good.

After the purchase in 1879 I had no trouble with them, and on the contrary received the warmest thanks from the parish priest for my conduct as a landlord.

I drained soil and imported seed potatoes, besides executing other improvements.  The estate was not in good order when I purchased it, and I know from other sources that the tenants were well satisfied with me.

I may as well mention, that having no agencies on the Listowel side of Kerry, I was never on the Harenc property before the question of purchasing arose, and it had on it no house in which I and my family could reside.

Until 1881 no tenant made any hostile move, but one fellow, who took me into the Land Court after the Land Act, presented a very curious case.

This man, whose rent was sixty-five pounds a year, applied to the Court for reduction.  There was a press of business at the time which necessitated an adjournment, but in the end the Court fixed the new rent at the same amount as the old rent.

The tenant appealed; but though the Appeal Court valuers attested that it was worth seventy-five pounds a year, still the rent was unchanged.

In other words, the Government sold me a farm and parliamentary title at sixty-five pounds a year which one set of Commissioners thought fair and the other thought cheap, and yet I had to spend more than half a year’s rent in defending my title to it.

There is no appeal as to value, except to the head Commissioners.  They appoint two other Sub-Commissioners to inspect the land, and they of course avoid disagreeing with their brethren.

It is very like Mr. Spenlow in David Copperfield, who said, ’If you are not satisfied with Doctors’ Commons you can go to the delegates,’ and being asked who the delegates were, he replied that they came from Doctors’ Commons.

I bought the Harenc property as a speculation, and it turned out a confoundedly bad one.

Once I had a conversation with a Land Leaguer on the subject.  He said:—­

‘You bought a stolen horse, and must take the consequences.’

‘If that were so,’ I retorted, ’I would have an action against the Government which sold me the horse.’

I had a correspondence on the subject with Mr. Chamberlain, which elicited some remarkable letters; but as he marked all of his private and confidential, they of course cannot be published.

Now for a few anecdotes, just to show that I have not exhausted my stock.

It would be cruel to specify the individual of whom I can truthfully say, he was the biggest fool that ever disfigured the Irish bench.