Since that was a debatable point on which the Commission had no jurisdiction to inquire, I returned no answer. As the distress was alluded to above, I may lighten the recent seriousness of my observations by an anecdote on the topic. In 1880 the Duchess of Marlborough organised a fund for supplying the people with meal. The Dublin Mansion House did the same, but their meal was of a coarser description. A Blasquet Islander was asked how he was getting on, and made answer:-- 'Illigant, glory be to the Saints. We're eating the Duchess, and feeding two pigs on the Mansion House.' This recalls the story of the Englishman who inquired of a Kerry man which measure of English legislation had proved most beneficial for Ireland. 'The Famine (of 1879) was the best, beyond a shadow of doubt,' was the reply, 'for I fattened and sold ninety fine turkeys on the strength of it.' In 1880 some Kerry men did a very good stroke of business. They sent a cargo of potatoes from Killorglin to Scotland and brought them back as imported Champion seed, selling them for six times the original price. About this period Mr. Leeson-Marshall, who had been away from Kerry and coming back found some cottages near Milltown still only half built, observed:-- 'Good God, aren't those houses finished yet?' 'Well, sor,' was the reply, 'the contract's finished but the houses aren't.' And it has been my life-long experience that ninety-five per cent, of all the penalties in contracts are worthless, as the contractors themselves are only too well aware. Being a land agent, I wish to provide some account from another pen of my stewardship, for which said stewardship I was falsely called 'the most rack-renting agent in Ireland.' Out of Mr. Finlay Dun's book, from which I have previously quoted, I condense the following from the chapter he devoted to the estates for which I was agent. He observes that in 1881 my firm had the supervision of eighty-eight estates, upwards of three thousand farming tenants, and annually collected rents to the value of a quarter of a million sterling. From the particulars I furnished him he deduces:-- 'So recently as the end of November the Lady Day rents had been well paid up; old arrears had been reduced; on two estates in the Court of Chancery L6000 had been collected with only a few shillings in default. Dairy farmers prospering had been particularly well able to pay rents and other claims. More recent rent collections, unfortunately, were not so satisfactory. Tenants generally had earned the money, but had not been allowed to pay it over. 'Many of the low-rented estates were badly farmed and the tenantry in low water. On the higher rented, the struggle for existence had brought out extra industry and energy and led to fair success.' The following provided an apt illustration:--