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Skibbereen and West Carbery Eagle

January 17, 1880

We have much pleasure in congratulating Lord Bandon upon the prompt and decisive manner in which he carried his promise into execution with regard to his affording employment to a gang of unemployed labourers who waited on the Bandon Board of Guardians on Wednesday week, and who gave so distressing an account of the trials and sufferings they were passing through.

The noble Earl was manifestly startled at the representation made by the poor men, about which he was up to then perfectly ignorant, a circumstance he regarded as singularly strange, having been recently shooting in the neighborhood. However, having learned the exact condition of affairs, he lost no time towards remedying the grievance, and directed his popular and respected agent to make diligent enquiry with the view of providing employment as far as circumstances justified.

To the credit of both landlord and agent be it said that on the very day after the promise was made arrangements were completed so as to admit of nearly thirty men being at once engaged on drainage works. But the promising young nobleman--worth son of a worth father--has not confined himself to this act of benevolence, as he has over fifty men similarly employed on his own far at Killountain, near Castle Bernard, and to crown his philanthropic efforts to meet an emergency but too universally felt, he has gone through the necessary preliminaries to obtain loans from the Board of Works for the carrying out of reproductive measures at Durrus, that lovely, vastly-improved, and daily progressing region, which is to day so bright and lasting a memorial to the princely munificence and practical worth of his departed sire.

We feel deeply gratified at seeing his successor showing such geuine concern in the welfare and happiness of his dependents, and we commend the promptitude and earnestness which marked his praiseworthy action to the favourable consideration of those who are blessed with the same means of doing good.