Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/52

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THE EARL OF MAYO

friends and neighbours. I recollect his saying to me when a political opponent, Lord Dunkellin, died: "Dunkellin is a great loss; he loved Ireland so truly, and understood her so well, that he would have done real good for us all some day."'

A colleague, who afterwards came into the closest relations with Lord Naas in his Parliamentary work, writes to me thus: 'Lord Mayo lived too far ahead of his party for his own comfort. Though he was a member of a Tory Cabinet, I think that his opinions were shared to the full by only one member of that Cabinet, Mr. Disraeli. He was not entirely a Conservative of his own day; neither was he a Liberal, according to the tenets of the Liberal party of his time. He was a large-minded politician, who felt the necessity of belonging to one party or another if he were to effect anything practical. While revering the Established Church, he admitted the right of every man to choose his own creed, and denied to no faith a power to save. While he desired to maintain all rights essential to the security of landed property, he was anxious to do away with the legal or technical difficulties that stand between the tillers of the soil and the full enjoyment of the results of their labour. If he could only see a real reform in the state of the land and of the cultivator, he cared not whence or how it came. He believed that any permanent improvement of the land ought to be for the benefit alike of the owner and of the tiller of the soil. His idea was, "If you really improve my land, you shall