The settlement of the Evicted Tenants Question was another of the vital issues salved from the wreckage.  There were from eight to ten thousand evicted tenants—­“the wounded soldiers of the Land War” as they were termed—­to whom the Irish Party and the National Organisation were pledged by every tie of honour that could bind all but the basest.  The Land Conference Report made an equitable settlement of the Evicted Tenants problem an essential portion of their treaty of peace.  But the revival of an evil spirit amongst the worst landlords and the interpretations of hostile law officers reduced the Evicted Tenants clause in the Act of 1903 almost to a nullity.  In this extremity the Cork evicted tenants requested the Land Conference to reassemble and specify in precise language the settlement which they regarded as essential.  All the representatives of the landlords and of the tenants on the Conference accepted the invitation, with the single exception of Mr Redmond.  Eventually, despite these and other discouragements, the Conference met in Dublin in October 1906, sat for three days, and agreed upon lines of settlement which were given effect to in legislation by Mr Bryce the following year.  True, the restoration of these unhappy men did not proceed as rapidly as their sacrifices or interests demanded.  They were also the victims of the malign opposition extended to the policy of Conciliation, even when it embraced a deed so essentially charitable as the relief of the families who had borne the burden and the heat of the day in the fierce agrarian wars.  Lamentable to relate, Mr Dillon tried to intimidate Mr T.W.  Russell and Mr Harrington from joining the Conference, and when he failed, publicly denounced their Report.  And if there are still some of them “on the roadside,” as I regret to think they are, the blame does not lie with the Conciliationists, but with those who persistently opposed their labours.

In the settlement of the University Question Cork also took the lead when its prospects were in a very bad way.  This had been for over a century a vexed and perplexing problem.  I have dealt cursorily with primary education, which is even still in a deplorably backward state in Ireland.  Secondary education has not yet been placed on a scientific basis, and is not that natural stepping-stone between the primary school and the university that it ought to be.  There is no intelligent co-ordination of studies in Ireland and we suffer as no other country from ignorantly imposed “systems” which have had for their object, not the development of Irish brains but the Anglicisation of Irish youth, who were drenched with the mire of “foreign” learning when they should have been bathed in the pure stream of Irish thought and culture.