When I was in Parliament, Isaac Butt, who was failing in his endeavour to promote an agitation, begun in 1870, in favour of Home Government, or Home Rule, did his best to persuade me to join the Irish party, and to obtain for it Lord Waterford's influence, because, he said, Lord Waterford was so universally popular and so just. Although I was unable to join the Irish party, I was much impressed with Butt's arguments in so far as the land question was concerned; and I discussed the whole matter with Lord Waterford. I suggested to him that he should form a league of landlords pledged not to rack-rent their tenants; pointing out that if the Irish landlords failed to take the initiative in reform, it was certain that the people would eventually prevail against them, and that the reforms which would be enforced by law would bear hardly upon the good landlords. Lord Waterford sympathised with my view of the matter; but after long consideration he came to the conclusion that the course I proposed might do more harm than {132} good. The question was inextricably complicated by the fact that many of the landlords who had raised their rents, had been compelled to raise them by force of circumstances; as, for instance, when they had been obliged to pay very high charges upon succeeding to their estates. In his position, Lord Waterford shrank from associating himself with a scheme which must inflict hardship upon landlords poorer than himself. Events took their course, with the result I had foreseen. My proposal was inspired by that sympathy with the demands of the Irish people, and that recognition of their justice, which had been accorded by both great political parties in turn, and which ultimately found expression in the Wyndham Land Purchase Act. Not long ago I asked one of my tenants, who had bought his holding under the Wyndham Act, and who was a strong Home Ruler: "Now you own the farm, are you still for Home Rule?" "Faith, Lord Char-less," said he, "now I have the land behind me, shure if it was a choice I could be given between Home Rule and a bullock, I'd take the bullock." In recording the beginning of my Parliamentary career, I may say at once that I have always disliked politics, as such. I entered Parliament with the desire to promote the interests of the Service; and in so far as I have been successful, I have not regretted the sacrifices involved. But in 1874 my approval of denominational education--in other words, my support of the right of every parent to have his child educated in his own religion--outweighed my opposition to Home Rule. One of my principal supporters, himself a Home Ruler, suggested as an ingenious compromise that I should so print my election address that the words Home Rule should appear large and prominent, and the qualification "an inquiry into," very small: a proposal I declined.