I must also observe to you that there is what the Duke used to call "a terrible sameness" about your letters. The potatoes are always going to rot, the people always going to leave. It rains for ten weeks at a time, and if you have three fine days you cry out that the country is ruined by drought. Just for sake of a little variety, can't you take a prosperous tone for once, instead of "drawing my attention," as you superciliously phrase it, to the newspaper announcement about "George Davis and other petitioners, and the lands of Ballyclough, Kiltimaon, and Knocknaslat-tery, being part of the estates of James Kenny Dodd, Esq., of Dodsborough." I have already given you my opinion about that Encumbered Estates Court, and I see no reason for changing it. Confiscation is a mild name for its operation. What Ireland really wanted was a loan fund,--a good round sum, say three and a half or four millions, lent out on reasonable security, but free from all embarrassing conditions. Compel every proprietor to plant so many potatoes for the use of the poor, and get rid of those expensive absurdities called "Unions," with all the lazy, indolent officials; do that, and we might have a chance of prospering once more. It makes me actually sick to hear you, an Irishman born and bred, repeating all that English balderdash about "a cheap and indisputable title." and so forth. Do you remember about four-and-twenty years ago, Tom, when I wanted to breach a place for a window in part of the old house at Dodsborough, and Hackett warned me that if I touched a stone of it I 'd maybe have the whole edifice come tumbling about my ears. Don't you see the analogy between that and our condition as landlords, and that our real security lay in the fact that nobody could dare to breach us? Meddle with us once, and who could tell where the ruin would fall! So long as the system lasted we were safe, Tom. Now, your Encumbered Court, with its parliamentary title, has upset all that security; and that's the reason of all the distress and misfortune that have overtaken us. I think, after the specimen of my opinions, I 'll hear no more of your reproaches about my "growing indifference to home topics," my "apparent apathy regarding Ireland," and other similar reflections in your last letter. Forget my country, indeed! Does a man ever forget the cantharides when he has a blister on his back? If I 'm warm, I 'm sorry for it; but it 's your own fault, Tom Purcell. You know me since I was a child, and understand my temper well; and whatever it was once, it hasn't improved by conjugal felicity.