When the Duke of York was in Ireland, he stayed with Lord Dunraven, and Mr. Gerald Balfour as Chief Secretary was one of the house-party, and the mother of the Knight of Glin was also there.

A short time before, a chemist from Cork, who had been appointed sub-confiscator, and desired to secure his own position, had heavily cut down the Fitzgerald rents.

Mr. Balfour, by way of making polite conversation, observed to Mrs. Fitzgerald:—­

‘I believe your son’s property has been a long time in the family.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ’we got it in the reign of Edward I., and held it until last year, when the Government sent an apothecary from Cork to rob us of it.’

The conversation dropped.

Mr. Arthur Balfour was very plucky, not only personally, but in his legislative efforts, and he did wonders for Ireland—­the light railways relieving numbers from starvation, and opening up the country.

An English journalist went down to the West, and tried to make inquiries about the popularity of the Chief Secretary.

He came to the cabin of a man who had been rescued from starvation by getting Government employment, and had thrived so well that he had become possessed of a pig.

This pig, on the appearance of the Englishman, escaped into a potato-field, and he heard the woman of the house shout to her son:—­

’Mickey, look sharp and turn out Arthur Balfour before he does any mischief.’

The name of the pig showed the gratitude of the family.

When alluding to Mr. Lowther I omitted to mention that he was always of opinion that a well-planned scheme of education was the best panacea for the Irish troubles, and it certainly would have brought up a generation less keenly sensitive to the exaggerated wrongs of the country to which both sexes are so frantically attached.  During his not very lengthy tenure of the office of Chief Secretary it was asserted that Sir George Trevelyan also had some such idea; but whether he went so far as to draft his plan, and it was consigned to some forgotten pigeon-hole by Mr. Gladstone, I cannot say.

When the Duke of Argyll described Sir George Trevelyan as a jelly-fish, he made a comparison which, from my personal experience, I should call particularly apt.

Ireland had very little use for such a flabby politician, and it may be added, he had very little use for Ireland.

He was in such a devil of a fright at being forced to succeed poor Lord Frederick Cavendish that it was some time before the pressure put upon him sufficed to make him accept office, nor would he be induced to go over to Dublin Castle at all until he had been given Cabinet rank.  As for the Cabinet, they were so anxious to settle upon a living target for the Home Rulers to practise upon, and so afraid that through his default one of themselves might have to undertake the unpleasant office, that they would have given the prospective victim almost anything he liked, on the principle of letting the condemned criminal choose what he prefers for his final meal before that brief interview with the hangman.