The popular esteem which Mr. Bourke won by his exertions during the famine was presently to bear fruit. In 1847 the two seats for County Kildare were contested by the Marquess of Kildare representing the Whigs, and Mr. O'Neill Daunt with Mr. John O'Connell for the Repealers. Mr. Richard Bourke came forward as a moderate Conservative. The return of the Marquess was a foregone conclusion; and it soon became apparent that the struggle for the second seat lay between Mr. O'Neill Daunt and Mr. Bourke. While Mr. Bourke declared himself strongly for the Union, he was also in favour of legislation which would give 'compensation to improving tenants.' As regards the religious question, 'he knew that the Established Church was not the Church of the majority of the people; but it was the Church of the majority of the property of the country, and it was supported out of the pockets of the landlords, who were nine to one in favour of the Establishment.' The election was conducted with amenities on both {37} sides, which contrast pleasantly with such contests at the present day. To these amenities, Mr. Bourke's personal popularity contributed in no small measure. 'I pledge you my honour,' shouted Mr. Daunt the Repealer, to certain of his followers who were interrupting the young Conservative candidate, 'I pledge you my honour I will leave the hustings if this gentleman is not heard.' 'I again declare,' Mr. Daunt exclaimed in another crisis of cat-calls, 'I will quit the Court-house if this gentleman does not get a fair hearing.' The result of the poll was to return the Marquess of Kildare and Mr. Bourke to Parliament. So in the middle of his twenty-sixth year Mr. Richard Southwell Bourke entered the House of Commons for his own County--a moderate Conservative of the hereditary type, willing to go steadily with his party in English measures, and resolved, as far as in him lay, to secure their help in carrying Irish Land Reforms. From 1847 to 1849 Mr. Bourke sat as a silent member. In 1848 he married Miss Blanche Wyndham; her father, afterwards Lord Leconfield, presenting the young couple with a town-house in Eccleston Square. Ever since his return from Russia, Mr. Bourke had been an active farmer and horse-breeder on his family lands in Ireland. In 1849 his father succeeded to the Earldom of Mayo, and Mr. Bourke became Lord Naas. But the new Earl, not liking the principal house of Palmerstown so well as his old residence at Hayes, gave up the Kildare mansion, with its large home-farm of 500 acres, to his son. {38} Lord Naas went with his usual energy into every detail of Irish agricultural life. The thorough knowledge which he acquired of farming and the breeding of improved stocks was destined to serve him in a very important, although altogether unexpected, manner in India.