The new movement had thus completed the first and second stages of its mission.  The idea of self-help had become a growing reality, and upon this foundation an edifice of State aid had been erected.  When a Nationalist member met a Tory member of the Recess Committee he laughed over the success with which they had wheedled a measure of industrial Home Rule out of a Unionist Government.  None the less they cordially agreed that the people would rise to their economic responsibility.  The promoters of the movement had faith that this new departure in English government would be more than justified by the English test, and that in the new sphere of administration the government would be accorded, without prejudice, of course, to the ultimate views either of Unionists or Home Rulers, not only the consent, but the whole-hearted co-operation of the governed.

FOOTNOTES: 

[43] The memorandum which he kindly contributed to the Recess Committee was copied into the Annual Report of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1896.

CHAPTER IX.

A NEW DEPARTURE IN IRISH ADMINISTRATION.

To the average English Member of Parliament, the passing of an Act “for establishing a Department of Agriculture and other Industries and Technical Instruction in Ireland and for other purposes connected therewith,” probably signified little more than the removal of another Irish grievance, which might not be imaginary, by the concession to Ireland of an equivalent to the Board of Agriculture in England.  In reality the difference between the two institutions is as wide as the difference between the two islands.  The chief interest of the new Department consists in the free play which it gives to the pent-up forces of a re-awakening life.  A new institution is at best but a new opportunity, but the Department starts with the unique advantage that, unlike most Irish institutions, it is one which we Irishmen planned ourselves and for which we have worked.  For this reason the opportunity is one to which we may hope to rise.

Before I can convey any clear impression of the part which the Department is, I believe, destined to play on the stage of Irish public life, it will be necessary for me to give a somewhat detailed description of its functions and constitution.  The subject is perhaps dull and technical; but readers cannot understand the Ireland of to-day unless they have in their minds not only an accurate conception of the new moral forces in Irish life and of the movements to which these forces have given rise, but also a knowledge of the administrative machinery and methods by which the people and the Government are now, for the first time since the Union, working together towards the building up of the Ireland of to-morrow.