The substance of our recommendations was that a Department of Government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to Parliament at its head.  The central body was to be assisted by a Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned.  The Department was to be adequately endowed from the Imperial Treasury, and was to administer State aid to agriculture and industries in Ireland upon principles which were fully described.  The proposal to amalgamate agriculture and industries under one Department was adopted largely on account of the opinion expressed by M. Tisserand, late Director-General of Agriculture in France, one of the highest authorities in Europe upon the administration of State aid to agriculture.[43] The creation of a new minister directly responsible to Parliament was considered a necessary provision.  Ireland is governed by a number of Boards, all, with the exception of the Board of Works (which is really a branch of the Treasury), responsible to the Chief Secretary—­practically a whole cabinet under one hat—­who is supposed to be responsible for them to Parliament and to the Lord Lieutenant.  The bearers of this burden are generally men of great ability.  But no Chief Secretary could possibly take under his wing yet another department with the entirely new and important functions now to be discharged.  What these functions were to be need not here be described, as the Department thus ‘agitated’ for has now been three years at work and will form the subject of the next two chapters.

On August 1st, 1896, less than a year from the issue of the invitation to the political leaders, the Report was forwarded to the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant for Ireland, with a covering letter, setting out the considerations upon which the Committee relied for the justification of its course of action.  Attention was drawn to the terms of the original proposal, its exceptional nature and essential informality, the political conditions which appeared to make it opportune, the spirit in which it was responded to by those who were invited to join, and the degree of public approval which had been accorded to our action.  We were able to claim for the Committee that it was thoroughly representative of those agricultural and industrial interests, North and South, with which the Report was concerned.

There were two special features in the brief history of this unique coming together of Irishmen which will strike any man familiar with the conditions of Irish public life.  The first was the way in which the business element, consisting of men already deeply engaged in their various callings—­and, indeed, selected for that very reason—­devoted time and labour to the service of their country.  Still more significant was the fact that the political element on the Committee should have come to an absolutely unanimous agreement upon a policy which, though not intended to influence the trend of politics, was yet