'Not if it is a good thing,' I replied, 'for then you could not have too much.'

Mr. Shaw Lefevre's Commission on the housing of the working classes in Ireland was very uninteresting. 'Oxen are stalled, pigs are styed or take possession of the cabin, but what is done for the Irish labourers?' asked a passionate mob-orator, and in many cases it might have been answered that a good deal more has been done for them than the idle ruffians deserve. I had no difficulty in showing that landlords were always willing to give assistance in housing labourers, and when an ex-mayor of Cork on the Commission seemed to doubt my assertions, I might have retorted that though he was used to factory hands, yet he had never bothered himself how they lived out of work time.

The Duke of Devonshire was on this board. He has obtained his great and honourable reputation by conscientiously slumbering through many duties. His tastes are for racing and shooting, but from sheer patriotism he has devoted himself to politics with all the energy of his lethargic manner, which successfully conceals abnormal common-sense. It was he, more than any other man, who saved Ireland from Home Rule, though as an Irish landlord he has not come much to the fore, because his vast English estates are immeasurably more important than those situated round Lismore. This picturesque town was once called the abode of saints, but only antiquarians remember that its university was once so important that Alfred the Great went there to study, and that in the old castle Henry II held a Parliament. The Cavendishs rebuilt the latter, and both in appearance and position it much resembles Warwick Castle. It has not very many bedrooms, and when the King was first expected, among various extensive alterations, a bathroom was put up. The Duke has generally visited Lismore twice a year, and has never stood unduly on his dignity, but been approachable by all, and reasonable about everything, which has also been characteristic of his political views.

Lord Bessborough presided over a Commission on Irish Land Laws. He was a very kind, very lean man, who was wont in old age to walk about London wrapped in a black cape, and was idolised at Harrow, where twenty generations of boys knew him and his brothers and valued their unabated interest in school cricket. Baron Dowse, a judge I have already mentioned, the O'Conor Don, and Mr. Shaw, were the members who put questions to me. I remember the O'Conor Don was much impressed when I mentioned I had made six tours in Scotland, and had been in Holland, in Belgium, in France, in Germany, in Italy, and just before in Spain, to inquire into the state of agriculture. I said that if a man persisted in farming badly I would serve him with notice to quit even if he paid his rent, and I pointed out that there were three hundred thousand occupiers of land in Ireland whose holdings were under £8 Poor Law valuation, and these occupiers, when their potatoes fail, have nothing to fall back upon but relief work, starvation, or emigration, and I further laid before the Commission a purchase scheme. There would be twenty years' purchase-money to be lent by the State, two years' purchase to be found by the tenant and two years more at the end of ten years. Thus the landlord would get a price for his property that would induce him to sell (reductions had not then been wholesale) and the tenant would get a lease for ever with abolition of rent at the end of thirty-five years by paying a fine of two years' rent down and two more at the end of ten years.

They would not have it. Who ever expected that Justice would lift the bandage from her eyes for the sake of fair play to the landlord?

Lord Salisbury had a Commission on the working of the Land Act of 1881. Lord Dunraven, Lord Pembroke, and Lord Cairns were on it, the latter being chairman. He was so austere that, when he was made Lord Chancellor, it was said he had swallowed the mace and could not digest it. His law may have been profound, but it was never relieved by a gleam of humour, and his ecclesiastical proclivities were of the lowest Church type. For some time he nominated Tory bishops, and it was declared he was so evangelical that he would have suggested any clergyman for a vacant bishopric who promised to forego the ecclesiastical gaiters. His horror of Anthony Trollope's novels was notorious, especially his dislike of Mrs. Proudie and her attendant divines.

I said the working of the Land Act was ruin to Irish landlords, and cited a case. A Kerry gentleman had an estate of £1200 rent roll, with a mortgage of £8000 which involved charges of £400 a year, a jointure tithes and head rent took £400 more. The Commissioners by so cutting down the rent by £400 made a clean sweep of what that landlord had to live on. Fortunately, he had his mother's fortune of £40,000, which his grandfather had wisely provided should not be invested in Irish lands, having, in fact, established a contingency in case his grandson should be dispossessed of the property he had held for generations, by a Government truckling to blustering 'no-renters.'

Before Lord Cowper's Commission on the same subject, I said much the same thing over again and realised that Royal Commissions are most valuable for the purpose of shelving pregnant topics. The only good derived from these official inquiries is that the witnesses get their expenses and the Government printers have a lucrative contract.

There is a story told of a witness who was being brought over to London to give evidence.

'Patrick,' said the priest, 'you'll be having to mind what you're saying over there. Perjury won't help you no more than I can, my poor fellow.'