142 My Little Farm 



he has done, he could make the heather plot of 

 great value to himself. The Sub-Commissioners 

 sent down to report on values might believe 

 ' Pat's ' story of reclamation, and if they did, they 

 would be bound to assess both the purchase value 

 and security on the heather basis rather than on 

 the rich fields around it. That could bring 

 ' Pat's ' purchase annuity down to 35. yd. an acre 

 instead of being over 1, as it ought to be." 



I must not say that these were the expert's 

 exact words to his friends. They were his 

 friends' words to me, " on his information," 

 and they had received no farther information ; 

 not a word about the value in stock compared with 

 the acreage and valuation, nor about the rate of 

 crops per acre, nor about the genus and quality of 

 herbage in the meadows and pasture as compared 

 with the sedge and heather across the fences in 

 other people's land. In the minds of the 

 expert's immediate confidants in Parliament, I had 

 planted a sample half-rood of heather in highly 

 fertile soil (where it could never grow), and by 

 means of the trick, perpetrated a desperately clever 

 fraud on the vendor and the Treasury, pocketing 

 a considerable sum of tangible wealth in capitalised 

 values at their expense ; and not only was I a 

 consummate knave, but the successful consum- 

 mation of my knavery must imply also that the 

 Treasury, the Estates Commissioners, the Sub- 

 Commissioners, the judges of the Land Court and 

 the vendor himself were all consummate fools. 

 The expert's legislating confidants, though so 



