clauses dealing with urban as well as rural industries, but these lie outside my present subject, and I shall not refer to them further here.  On the side of rural development the Bill embodied a novel experiment in the art of government—­novel at all events in British or Irish experience, though something like it had already been tried with conspicuous success in various countries on the Continent.  It was the continental example which had inspired the Report of the Recess Committee, and it was the recommendations of the Recess Committee which in their turn suggested the main features of the Bill of 1899.

There was indeed one body in Ireland whose functions corresponded in some degree with those of the Authority it was now proposed to set up.  This body was the Congested Districts Board; and it might be said with some approximation to the truth that the object we had in view was to do for the rest of Ireland, mutatis mutandis, what the Congested Districts Board was intended to do for the poverty-stricken districts of the West.  But there was this very important difference.  The operations of the Congested Districts Board were carried out, and necessarily carried out, on strictly “paternal” lines; the dominant note in the new departure was to be the encouragement of self-help.  This difference carried with it an equally important difference in the constitution and methods of the administering Authority.

Out of a total endowment of L166,000 a year, a sum of over L100,000 was placed at the disposal of the Department to be applied to the “purposes of agriculture and other rural industries.”  These “purposes” are defined in the Act as including—­

“the aiding, improving, and developing of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, dairying, the breeding of horses, cattle, and other live stock and poultry, home and cottage industries, the preparation and cultivation of flax, inland fisheries, and any industries immediately connected with and subservient to any of the said matters, and any instruction relating thereto, and the facilitating of the carriage and distribution of produce.”

This part of the Endowment Fund was, in short, a grant to the Department to be applied to what may be described as rural development in the widest sense of the term.  As to the methods, little or no restriction was imposed upon the scope of its powers; and in the expenditure of the money it was to be as free from Treasury control as the Congested Districts Board itself.

On the other hand, the Congested Districts Board was not only free from Treasury control, it was free from any control whatever.  It was an unpaid Board, and it could spend its money where it pleased and how it pleased, and there was nobody to say it nay.  True, its members were appointed by Government, and the Chief Secretary was ex-officio a member of the Board; but he had no greater authority given to him than any of his colleagues, and in case of any difference of opinion the decision was that of the majority of the Board.  No single member of the Board could be held responsible for any of its acts; and accordingly, although the vote for the Board came annually before Parliament, of real Parliamentary responsibility there was none.