ill his death. The Rev. W.J. Clarke,
the acting trustee, bravely defended his trust and fought the battle
of tenant-right in the courts till driven out by the sheriff. He
was then called on to perform the same duty with regard to the
school-house. He has done it faithfully and well, and deserves the
sympathy of all the friends of freedom, justice, and fair dealing.
'I shall never accept a trust,' he says, in a letter to the _Northern
Whig_--'I shall never accept a trust, and permit any man, whether
nobleman, agent, or bailiff, to alienate that trust, without appealing
to the laws of my country; and if the one-sidedness of such laws shall
enable Dean and Mr. Stannus to confiscate this property, and turn
it from the purpose to which benevolence designed it, then, having
defended it to the last, I shall retire from the field satisfied that
I have done my duty to the memory of the dead and the educational
interests of the living.' Nor can we be surprised at the strong
language that he uses when he says: 'The history of the case rivals,
for blackness of persecution, anything that has happened in the north
of Ireland for many years. But such a course of conduct only recoils
on the heads of those who are guilty of it, and it shall be so in this
case. The Marquis of Hertfort will not live always, and the power of
public opinion may be able to reach his successor, and be felt even in
Lisburn.'

Dean Stannus, in his evidence before the Devon commission, stated that
only a small portion of the estate was held by lease. The leases were
obtained in a curious way. In 1823 a system of fining commenced. If a
tenant wanted a lease he was required to pay in cash a fine of 10 l.
an acre, which was equal to an addition of ten shillings an acre to
the rent for twenty years, not counting the interest on the money thus
sunk in the land. Yet, such was the desire of the tenants to have a
better security than the tenant-right custom, always acknowledged on
the estate, that 'every man who had money took advantage of it.' Mr.
Gregg, the seneschal of the manor, gave an illustration of the working
of this fining system. A tenant sold his farm of fourteen acres for
205 l., eight of the fourteen acres being held at will. The person who
bought the farm was obliged to take a lease of the eight acres, and
to pay a proportional fine in addition to the sum paid for the
tenant-right. Dean Stannus said 'he would wish to see the tenant-right
upheld upon the