4,094 1 6

Here, then, is a trust fund amounting to about 12,000 l. a year, and
the trustees actually spend one-third in its management! And what
is its management? What do they do with the money? Mr. Pitt Skipton,
D.L., a landed proprietor, who has nothing to gain or lose by the
Irish Society, asks, 'Where is our money laid out now? Not on the
estate of the Irish Society, but on the estates of the church and
private individuals--on those of owners like myself who give their
tenants perpetuity, because it is their interest to do so. We should
wish to see the funds of the society so expended that we could see
some memorial of them. But where is there in Derry any monument wholly
erected by the society which they were not specially forced to put up
by charter, with the exception of a paltry piece of freestone within
one of the bastions bearing their own arms.'

Let us only imagine what the corporation of Derry could do in local
improvements with this 12,000 l. a year, which is really their own
property, or even with the 4,000 l. a-year squandered upon themselves
by the trustees! Some of these worthy London merchants, it seems, play
the _rôle_ of Irish landlords when travelling on the Continent, on
the strength of this Derry estate, or their _assistantship_ in its
management. 'I object,' says Mr. J.P. Hamilton, 'if I take a
little run in the summer vacation to Paris or Brussels, to meet a
greasy-looking gentleman from Whitechapel or the Minories, turned out
sleek and shining from Moses', and to be told by him that he has a
large property in _Hireland_, in a place called Derry, and that his
tenantry are an industrious, thriving set of fellows, quite remarkable
for their intelligence, but that it is all owing to his excellent
management of his property and his liberality.'