to breathe and then expire.  In the ease, however, of the Gaelic League, and the movements for co-operation amongst the farmers, and for technical instruction in the arts and crafts most suitable to the country, these movements were conceived and created strongly to endure.  And to the credit of their authors and, be it said also, of the country for whose upliftment and betterment they were intended, they have endured greatly, and greatly fulfilled their purpose.

It is conceded by all who have any knowledge of the subject that the economic decadence of Ireland is not due to any lack of natural resources; neither is it due to insufficiency of capital or absence of workers.  It is due to want of initiative, want of enterprise, want of business method, want of confidence, and want of education on the right lines.  The education which should have been fashioned to fit the youth of Ireland for a life of work and industry and usefulness in their own land was invented with the express object of making of them “happy English children.”  There are possibly a few hundred millions sterling of Irish money, belonging in the main to the farmers and well-to-do shopkeepers, lying idle in Irish banks, and the irony of it is that these savings of the Irish are invested in British enterprises.  They help to enrich the British plutocrat and to provide employment for the British worker, whilst the vast natural resources of Ireland remain undeveloped and the cream of Ireland’s productive power, in the shape of its workers, betake themselves to other lands to assist in strengthening the structure and stability of other nations, when they should be engaged in raising the fabric of a prosperous commonwealth at home.

Those, however, who would blame Ireland for its present position of industrial stagnation forget that it was not always thus—­they do not bear it in mind that Ireland had a great commercial past, that it had its own mercantile marine doing direct trade with foreign countries, that it had flourishing industries and factories and mills all over the country, but that all these were killed and destroyed and driven out of existence by the cruel trade policy of England, which decreed the death of every Irish industry or manufacture which stood in the way of its own industrial progress.

Those who sought the economic reconstruction of the country had accordingly to contend against a very evil inheritance.  The commercial spirit had been destroyed; it should be educated anew.  The desire to foster home products and manufactures had ceased to exist; it should be re-born and a patriotic preference for home manufactures instilled into the people.  Pride in one’s labour—­the very essence of efficiency—­had gone out of the country.  It should be aroused again.  Economic reform should proceed first on educational lines before it could be hoped to establish new industries with any hope of success.  The pioneer in this work was the Hon. (now Sir) Horace Plunkett who returned to Ireland