144 M Little Farm 



tion with entertainment if he asked questions of a 

 very elementary kind. 



When Sir Horace Plunkett came, he was 

 frankly glad to see the work I had done, and 

 generous enough to acknowledge it as a contribu- 

 tion of value to the solution of the agricultural 

 problem. The questions he put to me while we 

 sat inside the heather plot showed that he knew 

 something about farming, but it is only fair to 

 others to add that Sir Horace was not at the 

 disadvantage of being an Irish Member of Parlia- 

 ment, which is always more than enough to unfit 

 any man for the post of our Agricultural Vice- 

 President, a post which, probably more than any 

 other in the State, requires a man to be beyond 

 the reach of popular applause and perverse censure. 

 In a choice of the two, I would have the Vice- 

 Presidentship even hereditary rather than elective 

 and Parliamentary, at least until such time as it is 

 possible for the Irish elector to say what he thinks. 

 Democratic sham can be much worse than 

 absolute monarchy, and the Department must 

 remain useless in proportion to the increasing 

 ecclesiastical control over it. Its finance and its 

 patronage are already quite at the will of a 

 majority made up of ecclesiastics and their 

 nominees. 



Mr. Russell has the honour to be a Scotchman, 

 and I have never been able to see the full depths of 

 meanness with which his countrymen are 

 commonly credited, but I have found in them an 

 incomparable capacity to get themselves estimated 



