ist lines. One instance may suffice. In 1900, the Board,
having come into the possession of the Dillon estate, wished to sell
it to the tenants; and when doing so, considering the sporting rights
to be a valuable asset, decided to reserve them. A considerable number
of the tenants expressed their readiness to purchase their holdings
subject to the reservation. The Board received an offer of L11,000
for the mansion, demesne and sporting rights over the estate. The
reservation of sporting rights when, taking the whole estate, they
were of pecuniary value, had been the common practice of the Board in
other sales; but an agitation was at once got up (not by the tenants)
against the reservation in this case, on the ground that it was not
right for the Board to place any burden on the fee simple of the
holdings; the offer of L11,000 was refused, and soon afterwards the
Board sold the mansion and the best part of the demesne to a community
of Belgian nuns for L2,100. The sporting rights, which became the
property of the purchasing tenants, ceased to be of any appreciable
pecuniary value, though in a few cases the tenants succeeded in
selling their share of them for small sums to local agitators. When a
witness before the Royal Commission of 1906 ventured to point out that
the taxpayers thus lost L8,900 by the transaction, he was severely
rebuked by the Clerical members of the Commission for suggesting
that the presence of the Belgian nuns was not a great benefit to the
neighbourhood.

This Royal Commission was appointed ostensibly for the purpose of
enquiring into and reporting upon the operations of the Board since
its foundation. After going through a mass of evidence, the Chairman
(Lord Dudley) said that the Board had tried for twenty years to
develop new industries and had failed; and another member (Lord
MacDonnell) said that it had only touched the fringe of the question;
and, considering that in spite of all its efforts at promoting local
industries, emigration continued to be greater from the district
subject to its control than from any other part of Ireland, it is hard
to see what other view was possible. But the large majority of the
Commission were ardent Nationalists--in fact, one of them a short time
before his appointment had publicly advocated an absolute, rigorous,
complete and exhaustive system of boycotting; and the witness who
spoke for the United Irish League told the Commission that it was the
strong vie