The Gaelic League, which defines its objects as ’The preservation of Irish as the national language of Ireland and the extension of its use as a spoken tongue; the study and publication of existing Irish literature and the cultivation of a modern literature in Irish,’ was formed in 1893.  Like the Agricultural Organisation Society, the Gaelic League is declared by its constitution to be ’strictly non-political and non-sectarian,’ and, like it, has been the object of much suspicion, because severance from politics in Ireland has always seemed to the politician the most active form of enmity.  Its constitution, too, is somewhat similar, being democratically guided in its policy by the elected representatives of its affiliated branches.  It is interesting to note that the funds with which it carries on an extensive propaganda are mainly supplied from the small contributions of the poor.  It publishes two periodicals, one weekly and another monthly.  It administers an income of some L6,000 a year, not reckoning what is spent by local branches, and has a paid staff of eleven officers, a secretary, treasurer, and nine organisers, together with a large number of voluntary workers.  It resembled the agricultural movement also in the fact that it made very little headway during the first few years of its existence.  But it had a nucleus of workers with new ideas for the intellectual regeneration of Ireland.  In face of much apathy they persisted with their propaganda, and they have at last succeeded in making their ideas understood.  So much is evident from the rapidly-increasing number of affiliated branches of the League, which in March, 1903, amounted to 600, almost treble the number registered two years before.  But even this does not convey any idea of the influence which the movement exerts.  Within the past year the teaching of the Irish language has been introduced into no less than 1,300 National Schools.  In 1900 the number of schools in which Irish was taught was only about 140.  The statement that our people do not read books is generally accepted as true, yet the sale of the League publications during one year reached nearly a quarter of a million copies.  These results cannot be left unconsidered by anybody who wishes to understand the psychology of the Irish mind.  The movement can truly claim to have effected the conversion of a large amount of intellectual apathy into genuine intellectual activity.

The declared objects of the League—–­ the popularising of the national language and literature—­do not convey, perhaps, an adequate conception of its actual work, or of the causes of its popularity.  It seeks to develop the intellectual, moral, and social life of the Irish people from within, and it is doing excellent work in the cause of temperance.  Its president, Dr. Douglas Hyde, in his evidence given before the University Commission,[29] pointed out that the success of the League was due to its meeting the people half way; that it educated them by giving