which he has no interest? I should like to see the Minister who would go to the country on such an insane policy, and who would call on the hardly taxed millions of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to burn huge holes in their pockets for such an object, for simply robbing Peter to pay Paul, and that without a pretence of right, or any conceivable good. And what security would the Irish land afford for the payment of this enormous impost? The terminable annuities due from the 'purchasing' tenants would, it has pleasantly been said, be a sufficient guarantee; but men of common sense are not to be caught by chaff; the idea is a vain and worthless delusion. The 'No Rent Manifesto' and the 'Plan of Campaign' were movements of Irish peasants, so to speak, of yesterday; what if another Parnell were to arise and to issue a ukase that 'a foreign and alien Government had no right to an unjust tribute;' and how could this be collected by a Department of an absentee State? The general taxpayer, therefore, who, thirteen years ago, grumbled at a demand of L5,000,000 only, will assuredly not fling L200,000,000, or half that sum, into the Serbonian bog of the Irish land. It is hardly necessary to dwell on so small a fact, 'that compulsory purchase would reduce the income tax of Ireland about one-half, for nine-tenths of the tenant 'purchasers' would be below its level;' but even this cannot be left out of sight. Conservative statesmen, it should be added, are especially bound to reject this scheme; in 1886 they denounced, in emphatic language, Mr. Gladstone's far less dangerous plan of making the State liable for L50,000,000, to buy out Irish landlords; flagrant inconsistency in politics should be eschewed. The probably fixed purpose of the general taxpayer not to mulct himself heavily to fling the Irish soil to a mass of peasants, is doubtless, and I say it with regret, the best security against the destruction of the Irish landlords; this despoiled and maltreated body of men just now fill the place in Irish affairs of the 'Injured Lady' of Swift's satire, gravely told by her lover across the Channel that 'I had cost him ten times more than I was worth to maintain me, and that it had been much better for him if I had been damned, or burnt, or thrown to the bottom of the sea.'[145] Nevertheless, I have faith in right-minded Englishmen, however prejudiced or ill-informed about an unpopular class, if plain facts and figures are set before them; let us see how it would fare with the Irish landlord were he forcibly expropriated under compulsory purchase. I will take the case of an Irish country gentleman, who, in the period between 1868 and 1878, had an income from his estate of L1500 a year, subject to a family charge of L10,000 at 4 per cent., that is, had a net annual income of L1100. Owing to the depression of agriculture since 1879, his rents would have naturally fallen about L300 a year; but let us suppose that, through the operation