SIR RICHARD PAGET 



When he felt strongly, so he spoke, for speech then 

 was not to be denied. I have known him at 

 a meeting suddenly vacate the chair because 

 he wished, as he put it, " to say something very 

 unparliamentary. ' ' 



As, in addition to being one of the Society's 

 trustees, he was chairman of the committee 

 responsible for the Journal, of which, in after 

 years, I became editor, I was in continuous com- 

 munication with him for a number of years, and 

 this has enabled me to write of him with a degree 

 of confidence that no lesser intimacy could justify. 

 He was the personification of that disinterested 

 earnestness which, in times of stress and strain, 

 has done so much to sustain Agriculture, and it 

 may truly be said of him that he used the gifts 

 with which he was endowed, and the opportu- 

 nities resulting therefrom, in a way commanding 

 the admiration even of those who were not always 

 in agreement with him or with the object he had 

 in view. 



The beau ideal of a country gentleman of the 

 Joseph Henley type, but modernized and brought 

 up to a later date, was the late Sir Richard Paget, 

 so long one of the representatives of Somerset in 

 Parliament, the chairman of its Quarter Sessions 

 and of its County Council, and the first of authori- 

 ties upon all matters pertaining to the official side 

 of country life. In a secretarial capacity I have 

 had to do with many men engaged in public work, 

 but I have rarely been associated with any one 

 who was his equal in mastery of technicalities, in 

 grasp of detail, and in getting at the bottom 

 of a question, however complex. Trained in 



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