20 SIR VICTOR BROOKE CHAP. 



seconder of the principal Resolution, and spoke with an 

 intense earnestness of conviction and graphic power of 

 language that stamped him as one of those that have a 

 natural gift of oratory. I have mentioned previously 

 that the circumstances of his life prevented this power 

 being devoted to the service of the State, but no record 

 of his life would be complete without mention being 

 made of his possessing those qualities that would have 

 gone far to make an English statesman. 



After the passing of the Ashbourne Act, Brooke felt 

 that the relative position of landlord and tenant in 

 Ireland must enter upon an entirely new phase. For 

 three hundred years the Brookes had administered their 

 property in Fermanagh with a just regard to the well- 

 being of those renting the land under them ; and the 

 old feudal feeling of being a father to the people had 

 been handed down from generation to generation. 



Professor Huxley, in a letter written to Lady Brooke 

 after her husband's death, thus alludes to the kindly 

 relations existing between landlord and tenant on the 

 Colebrooke estate : 



I had a very great esteem and affection for your 

 husband ; others will speak of his scientific work, 

 but one of the impressions of him that remains most 

 strongly on my mind, is connected with a visit to 

 one of his poorer tenants during the pleasant days 

 we spent with you. One morning news arrived that 

 Pat Somebody's holding had come to grief. We 

 drove over to the scene of the catastrophe, and it 

 was a sad sight enough. The cabin and potato 

 ground lay on the side of a gully, pitched there 

 seemingly on the " where it don't matter " principle. 

 But in vindication of the opposite rule of action, a 

 heavy storm had broken in the night, filling the 

 gully and flooding all around, evicting poor Pat 



