150 My Little Farm 



landlord's dodge to keep up rent and to destroy 

 the Land Bill " (1909). That was the " explana- 

 tion," as produced to me directly by a member of 

 the Commission when I next met him in London, 

 and I found plenty of independent corroboration, 

 including that of an editor for whom I wrote. 

 Observe how closely the explanation of the gates 

 and the cows coincides with that given of the 

 heather plot by the Department's expert in the 

 House of Commons. When the Commissioner, 

 with a twinkle in his other eye, asked me why I had 

 " imposed on them " with cows borrowed from 

 the neighbours and gates from the railway, I 

 asked him from whom I had borrowed the hay- 

 stack, measured and estimated by Sir Francis 

 Mowatt at seventeen tons. He saw through the 

 fraud, of course and yet consented to it as a basis 

 for Imperial legislation. The Land Bill went 

 through, and " the Holy cause of Ireland " 

 triumphed once more on the stock policy of 

 " fooling the British " for which the British 

 themselves are as much to blame as anybody. In 

 the natural and necessary course of things, it is 

 certain that the British, sooner or later, must 

 either give up governing the Irish or take the 

 trouble to know something about them. And from 

 like necessity, on like grounds, they must have to 

 give up a great deal more along with Ireland, 

 unless they can alter some of their present ways. 

 England at present, is just like a business that has 

 grown too big for the mind of its owner, who 

 cannot see that the only hope of further safe 



