Excerpt from The Cause of Ireland and Its Relation the the League of Nations: Statement by Hon. W. Bourke Cockran, Before the Committee of Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, Saturday, August 30, 1919 One man of my own acquaintance who is still living, and who occupies a very prominent position today in English public life, the younger son of a great noble, became a naval officer and received from his father when he came of age a property that yielded about a year. This property which he had never seen was managed by an agent. He went on the turf and in the course of a few weeks the thousand pounds which constituted his annual income passed from his pockets into those of enterprising bookmakers. As was usual with Irish landlords living out of the country, he wrote a letter to his agent asking of he could not send him some more money. The agent answered that the income from his property might easily be doubled. Why the mischief then don't you double it, he asked. I want to be sure, the agent answered, that I will be sustained. Now this man is quite an extraor dinary person, gifted with a mind singularly effective in analysis. Concluding from the agent's statement that there was something about the matter which needed explanation, he resolved to visit the estate and ascertain for himself the real condition. The agent met him and escorted him over the property, showing him various farms for which the rentals paid, he said, were entirely inadequate, and finally reached one which seemed to be particularly well kept and prosperous. There, said the agent, is one of the best farms on the estate. It is easily worth 2 guineas an acre, and all that the tenant pays for it is 2 and 6 pence. When the landlord asked why the higher rental was not obtained for it, the agent answered that when rentals had been raised on Irish estates the agents always incurred bitter enmity. This they were prepared to face, but they had not always been sustained by their principals. And this particular agent before he took any steps to increase rentals wanted to be assured that he would be supported by the landlord in any trouble that might ensue. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.