In the case of Hoffman, who held a farm at a rent of L30, I reduced it to L20 in 1881. In 1896 he went into court, and the County Court judge reduced it to L15, and on appeal he got it again reduced to L13. On land which came into my own hands after 1881, I was able to get rents over 50 per cent. in excess of those fixed by the sub-Commissioners. In the case of Patrick Quill, the farm on which the rent was cut down from L20 to L16 was sold for L300 with a charge of L9 on it. In the case of Michael Callaghan, Colonel Hickson expended L300 and Callaghan L100 on the farm, for which the rent was L70, and he sold his interest for L700. This perpetual wrangling and litigation is ruinous, for every man is farming down his land and letting it deteriorate as fast as he can; and there is a most marked difference in the county between those who have bought their land and those who are tenants. When a judicial rent was fixed and a tenant came into Court for a second judicial rent, I think the landlord should have been at liberty to stop him by tendering the farmer twenty years' purchase; that would give him a reduction of 20 per cent, and make him a proprietor in the course of time. In 1850 at Milltown Fair, yearlings were selling for 30s. apiece. The same cattle now are selling for L5, and Kerry is a great stock-breeding country. It is very hard to define a landlord, and you will hear of some being landlords who do not get a shilling from their estates. Under these circumstances they would be like the fox in AEsop's fable who had lost his own tail. To show how the Land Act works, on the Harenc estate I was offered twenty-seven years' purchase before the Act for a holding, and at the time of the Commission they offered me sixteen years' purchase on two-thirds of the rent. One other Commission besides that of the _Times_ remains to be mentioned. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a dour Scot with a lot of gumption in his head, was chairman of one on Imperial _versus_ local taxation. My easy task was to show the excess of the latter in Kerry, which is the highest taxed county in the three kingdoms. When a man thinks of the vast amount of information buried beyond all probable excavation in the Blue Books of the last fifty years, he may well break into Carlyle-like diatribes against the waste of the whole thing--which is paid for out of the taxpayer's pocket. Alluding to all these Commissions reminds me that there were three Land Commissioners--Mr. Bewlay, who was very deaf; Mr. FitzGerald, who was rather hasty; and Mr. Wrench, who consistently absented himself to attend the Congested Board. So they were respectively, though not respectfully, called, 'The judge who could not hear, the judge who would not hear, and the judge who is not here.' This was one of the witticisms of my clever friend, Mr. Robert Martin--'Bally-hooley'-one of the very few men who can write a good Irish song, and sing it well, into the bargain.