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 L8 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 L1200 rent roll, with a
mor