enabling them to build and improve and work the estate into the
rich and beautiful garden described by Mrs. Hall;--all this work
of improvement has been carried on, all or nearly all the costly
investments on the land have been made, without leases and in
dependence on tenant-right. We have seen what efforts were made by
landlord and agent to strengthen the faith of the tenants in this
security. We have seen also from the historical facts I have adduced
the sort of people that constitute the population of the borough of
Lisburn. If ever there was a population that could be safely entrusted
with the free exercise of the franchise it is the population of
this town--so enlightened, so loyal, so independent in means, such
admirable producers of national wealth, so naturally attached to
British connection. Yet for generations Lisburn has been a pocket
borough, and the nominee of the landlord, often a total stranger, was
returned as a matter of course. The marquis sent to his agent a _congé
d'élire_, and that was as imperative as a similar order to a dean
and chapter to elect a bishop. In 1852 the gentleman whom the Lisburn
electors were ordered to return was Mr. Inglis, the lord advocate of
Scotland. They, however, felt that the time was come when the borough
should be opened, and they should be at liberty to exercise their
constitutional rights. A meeting of the inhabitants was therefore
held, at which Mr. R. Smith was nominated as the popular candidate.
The contest was not political; it was simply the independence of the
borough against the _office_. Dean Stannus, as agent to an absentee
landlord, was the most powerful personage in the place, virtually
the lord of the manor. Before the election that gentleman published a
letter in a Belfast paper contradicting a statement that had
appeared to the effect that Lord Hertfort took little interest in the
approaching contest, in which letter he said: 'I have the best reason
for knowing that his lordship views with intense interest what is