Lord Lansdowne's resignation of the Under-Secretaryship for India, in consequence
of his dislike for Mr. Forster's tem- porary Compensation for Ejectments Bill, may, perhaps, be not entirely unconnected with the very despotic traditions of his Kerry estate. Those who remember a very re- markable book called " Realities of Irish Life, by W. Steuart Trench, Land Agent in Ireland," published some twelve or more years ago, will remember how Draconic used to be the conditions of tenants' life on Lord Lansdowne's estates,—conditions so severe that on one occasion, of course long before the present Lord Lausdowne's regime, a boy came to a cruel death through the terror felt by his relatives, of whom his grandmotherWas one, of sheltering, even for a few days, any one in their cabins whose presence there had not been permitted by the agent. On the Kerry estate of Lord Lansdowne no tenant might shelter his daughter-in-law, if the son married ; and the orphan children of deceased sons were excluded as steruly by the rules as their mother. If these traditions of an immorally-despotic landlord authority still.prevail on Lord Lansdowne's Kerry estate, we do not wonder that his wrath was stirred by a measure which proposed to interfere with his right to eject tenants at once, and without compensation, for the rather important breach of rule involved in forgetting to pay their rent.
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