The tendency has gradually been to consolidate and amalgamate land agencies, for as the difficulty of getting rents increased, more competent men of experience and judgment were needed by the landlords. As a proof of the trust reposed in me, I may mention that at one time I received the rents of one-fifth of the whole county of Kerry—and that in the worst times.
Such a task is not one to be envied, however joyously a man may take up the burden of his daily toil, and of course the agents as the outward and visible signs of the distant or absentee landlords obtained the greater share of the hatred felt for the latter.
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.