It is not peculiar to Irish incomes to fail to develop in response to
increasing demands upon them. It was, however, a distinctive feature
of the incomes of those who were Irish landlords during the latter
years of the Victorian era, to shrink in steady response to the
difficulties of English government in Ireland. Only Irish people can
understand the complicated processes of erosion to which Dick
Talbot-Lowry's resources were subjected, or can realise the tests of
fortitude and endurance to a man of spirit, that were involved by the
visitations of "Commissioners," with their fore-ordained mission of
lowering Dick's rents, rents that, in Dick's opinion, were already
philanthropically low. Major Talbot-Lowry, like many of his tribe,
though a pessimist in politics, was an optimist in most other matters,
and found it impossible to conceive a state of affairs when he would
be unable to do--approximately--whatever he had a mind for. At the age
of fifty-eight, fortitude and endurance are something of a difficulty
for a gentleman unused to the exercise of either of these fine
qualities, and after keeping the Broadwater Vale Hounds, for seventeen
years, as hounds should be kept, regardless of the caprices of the
subscription list, Major-Talbot-Lowry felt that he had deserved better
of his country than that he should now have to institute minor
economies, such as putting his men into brown breeches, foregoing the
yearly renewal of their scarlet coats, and other like humiliations.
Farther than details such as these, his sense of right and wrong did
not permit him to go.

"There are some things that they can't expect a gentleman to do," he
would say to his cousin, Miss Coppinger, "and as long as I keep the
hounds--"

"Then, my dear Dick, if you can't afford them, why keep them?"