t scant recognition of their wants and
wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results
expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of
jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local
Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this
Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes
contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of
the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be
turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found
that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden
by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been
wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a
public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the
others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be
erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196
buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It
has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am
sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed.

I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that
this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local
Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers
thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had
been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to
them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor
fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which
time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly
filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives,
blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a
committee to act upon their demands.

It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no
decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own
expense on their own property by landlords.

I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most
energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of
the late Lord Louth,--still remembered, I dare say, at the New York
Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of
concocting a "cocktail,"--and an uncle of the present peer. We