[36] July 27th, 1903,—­His Majesty thus confirmed the striking utterance of imperial policy contained in Lord Dudley’s speech to the Incorporated Law Society, on the 20th of November, 1902.  His Excellency, after protesting against the conception of empire as a ‘huge regiment’ in which each nation was to lose its individuality, said—­“Lasting strength, lasting loyalty, are not to be secured by any attempt to force into one system or to remould into one type those special characteristics which are the outcome of a nation’s history and of her religious and social conditions, but rather by a full recognition of the fact that these very characteristics form an essential part of a nation’s life; and that under wise guidance and under sympathetic treatment they will enable her to provide her own contribution and to play her own special part in the life of the empire to which she belongs.”

PART II.

PRACTICAL.

“For a country so attractive and a people so gifted we cherish the warmest regard, and it is, therefore, with supreme satisfaction that I have during our stay so often heard the hope expressed that a brighter day is dawning upon Ireland.  I shall eagerly await the fulfilment of this hope.  Its realisation will, under Divine Providence, depend largely upon the steady development of self-reliance and co-operation, upon better and more practical education, upon the growth of industrial and commercial enterprise, and upon that increase of mutual toleration and respect which the responsibility my Irish people now enjoy in the public administration of their local affairs is well-fitted to teach.”—­Message of the King to the Irish People, 1st August, 1903.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NEW MOVEMENT:  ITS FOUNDATION ON SELF-HELP.

The movement for the reorganisation of Irish agricultural and industrial life, to which I have already frequently referred, must now be described in practical operation.  Before I do this, however, there are two lines of criticism which the very mention of a new movement may suggest, and which I must anticipate.  Every year has its tale of new movements, launched by estimable persons whose philanthropic zeal is not balanced by the judgment required to discriminate between schemes which possess the elements of permanence, and those which depend upon the enthusiasm or financial support of their promoters, and are in their nature ephemeral.  There is, consequently, a widespread and well justified mistrust of novel schemes for the industrial regeneration of Ireland.  I confess to having had my ingenuity severely taxed on some occasions to find a sympathetic circumlocution wherewith to show cause for declining to join a new movement, my real reason being an inward conviction that nothing except resolutions would be moved.  In the complex problem of building up the economic and social life of a people with such