Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/47

Rh recollect any subject unconnected with Ireland on which he spoke.'

He had, however, attracted the notice of the chiefs of his party. He declared his views with much vigour on the necessity of giving improving tenants in Ireland some security for their outlay. The subject had been familiar to him from boyhood, and he brought to it a knowledge of details, obtained in the double capacity of a squire's son and of a practical farmer, willing to improve his land, but determined to make it pay.

In 1851 he supported his party by a great array of facts and figures concerning the Irish milling trade. This question also lay within his personal experience, both from the farmer's point of view and from the capitalist's. He knew the actual working of the system; and he succeeded in keeping the ear of the House through 16½ columns of Hansard — the longest speech but one in his twenty-one years of Parliamentary life. An enthusiastic letter of thanks from a meeting of Irish millers rewarded the effort.

Next year the Conservatives came into power. People remarked at the time, that Lord Derby, in forming his Ministry, chose a larger proportion than usual of men untried in office. Lord Naas was one of them. To his surprise and delight, he received the offer of the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland — the highest Parliamentary appointment which an Irish commoner holds in his native country. He was but