I THE LAND QUESTION IN IRELAND 21 



without notice, and playing the mischief with his 

 plot of ground. 



What struck me, as a cold-blooded bystander, was 

 the matter-of-course expectation on the part of the 

 tenant that " Sir Victor " was the Providence who 

 would put everything straight, and the equally 

 matter-of-course acceptance of the part by the land- 

 lord kind, thoughtful, and energetic about this 

 business, as about all others, in which I ever saw 

 him engaged. 



I thought to myself that here, at any rate, the Irish 

 landlord did not belong to the type depicted by 

 certain political Nationalists fierce, brutal, selfish, 

 in fact carnivorous, except for the want of the right 

 teeth. 



Subsequent events therefore surprised me more 

 than enough. I have done my best to think of my 

 generous, kind-hearted friend as one of the oppressors, 

 but quite in vain. The dull Saxon imagination is not 

 equal to the feat And my recollections of Sir Victor 

 on this occasion have had a great deal to do with the 

 doubt I have permitted myself to entertain, whether 

 patriotism and veracity are necessarily associated 

 across St. George's Channel. 



Thus, as Professor Huxley says, in sorrow and 

 trouble, poverty and distress, the tenants had come 

 to their landlord for sympathy and relief; but under 

 the Act, when the tenant had fixity of tenure, and 

 could go beyond the landlord to the Court and have his 

 rent settled, all the amenities of owning property and 

 sense of responsibility were taken away. The landlord 

 was no longer a free agent, no longer master of the 

 lands that had descended to him from his ancestors. 

 Brooke felt this keenly, and was one of the first to sell 

 his estate to such of his tenants as wished to purchase, 



