parsimony is to be appeased by the fact that the funds, which are largely derived from economics in the Irish Executive are advanced at a rate of interest, not as heretofore of 4-7/8 per cent., but, as in the case of land purchase advances, of 3-1/4 per cent., repayable in a period of 68-1/2 years.  The urgency of the problem is obvious.  The bearing of this state of affairs in rural housing on the fact that in 1904 two out of every thirteen deaths were due to tuberculosis shows that it is impossible to overestimate its importance, and I think that this condition of things, put side by side with the other economic facts with which I have dealt, are a sufficient reply to those who declare that conditions in Ireland would appear couleur de rose were they not seen through the jaundiced eyes of a discontented people.

If the catalogue of Acts of Parliament which have been found necessary to effect the transformation of the system of tenure in Ireland from the state in which it was forty years ago to that in which it is to-day is evidence of the pressing grievance under which the country has suffered; it is also proof that there cannot be legislation other than by shreds and patches on the part of a legislature which lacks sympathy for and knowledge of the country for which it is making laws.

The need for exceptional and separate legislation in Ireland has been admitted, and the system which existed in fact, obtained legal sanction only in 1881, to be in its turn swept away by further legislation which will have a deeper economic bearing on the future of the country than any other change since the relaxation of the Penal Laws.  For the rest I cannot do better than quote, in this connection, the opinion of the most dispassionate critic of Ireland of recent years—­Herr Moritz Bonn.  Speaking of the landlord who has sold his estate he says—­“He has no further cause of friction with his former tenants, who now pay him no rent.  He no longer regards himself as part of an English garrison.  He will again become an Irish patriot.  He no longer talks of the unity of the Empire, for Home Rule has few terrors for him now.  He talks of ‘Devolution,’ of the concession of a kind of self-government for Ireland.  He will struggle for a while against the designation Home Rule, because not so long ago he was declaring that he would die in the last ditch for the union of the three kingdoms, but he will soon be reconciled to it.  It will not be very long till the former landlords, whose chief interests lie in Ireland, have become enthusiastic Nationalists.”

CHAPTER V

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION