landlord wanted it for himself, and that though his father was willing
to pay an increased rent, still out he had to go--and, what was worse,
to have all his improvements confiscated, to have the fruits of the
blood and sweat and energy of his forefathers appropriated by a man
who had no right under heaven to them, save such as the iniquitous
laws of those days gave him.

It was something in the nature of poetic justice that the lad whose
family was cast thus ruthlessly on the roadside in the summer of 1880,
should, after the passage of the Land Act of 1903, have, in the
providence of things, the opportunity and the power for negotiating,
in fair and friendly and conciliatory fashion, for the expropriation
for evermore from all ownership in the land of the class who cast him
and his people adrift in earlier years.

The writer has it proudly to his credit that, acting on behalf of the
tenants of County Cork, he individually negotiated the sales of more
landed estates than any other man, or combination of men, in Ireland,
and that with the good will and, indeed, with the gratitude of the
landlords and their agents, and by reason of the fact that he applied
the policy of Conference, Conciliation and Consent to this practical
concern of men's lives, he secured for the tenants of County Cork a
margin of from one and a half to two years' purchase better terms than
the average rate prevailing elsewhere.

For the rest he devoted himself during the better part of a quarter of
a century to the housing and the social betterment of the workers in
town and country, with results which are reflected in their present
vastly improved condition.