My own share in the Parnell Commission was on November 29, 1888, on the twenty-third day. I was examined by the Attorney-General, the present Lord Chief Justice, and the most popular and most honourable of men. At that very time, I have heard, he sang each Sunday in the surpliced choir of a Kensington church, and I suppose he is the very best chairman of a committee or of a public meeting of our own or any other time. A Parnellite once said he had the unctuousness of a retired grocer, but was contradicted by a more reverent English Radical, who said, 'No, he has the unction of grace,' whereas, the truth is, he has the platform manner with him always. I told the Court I had been a Kerry magistrate for the previous thirty-seven years, and, after deposing to the earlier state of my property, I insisted that moonlighting and 'land-grabbing' were unknown terms before 1880. My examination under the Attorney-General was, in fact, too practical and useful to provide amusement for latter day readers. My cross-examination was begun by Sir Charles Russell, who led off with a sneer about my being the most popular man in the county, and, when I adhered to other statements, he added, 'Well, a very popular man. I will not put you on too high a pinnacle.' (Laughter.) Then for an hour and a half he plied me with the best balanced statistical questions I ever heard put in a hostile spirit, and without a note I could answer every one. After considerable hesitation I admitted on consideration that there was in Kerry one farmer benefiting by the Act of 1870. I have never heard since that he was caught and exhibited as the solitary outward and visible sign of the inward and legal benefit of the legislative force of Imperial Parliament. Mr. Lockwood, to whom, as artist, I had been serving as a model, evidently preferred to handle me with pencil rather than with questions, for he was almost as brief as Mr. Reid. It is my view that they both had consigned me to petrification under Sir Charles Russell, and finding me alive and kicking, thought me too tough to expire under such _coups de grace_ as they could inflict. We came to banter when Mr. Michael Davitt suggested that the young men of Castleisland took part in nocturnal raids because there was no such social inducement to keep them quiet, as a music-hall or a theatre; but I told him there ought to have been no inducement to them to shoot their neighbours, and that Castleisland was past redemption. He blandly alluded to my popularity with the tenants before 1880; but I only said that I got on fairly well with them, for I do not think that any agent was ever really popular. 'Relatively?' insidiously. 'Yes.' Then came this curious question, put with a gentleness that would have aroused the suspicion of a babe:-- 'Did you ever say, in reply to a question put to you by Mr. Townsend Trench as to why you were not shot, that you had told the tenants that if anything happened to you he would succeed you as agent?'