to teach the participants in the new project the meaning, and to imbue them with the spirit, of the joint enterprise into which they have been persuaded to enter with perhaps no very clear understanding of all that is involved.  There were in Ireland no precedents to guide us and no examples to follow, but the co-operative movement in England appeared to furnish most of the principles involved and a perfect machinery for their application.[37] So Lord Monteagle and Mr. R.A.  Anderson, my first two associates in the New Movement, joined me as regular attendants at the annual Co-operative congresses.  We were assiduous seekers after information at the head-quarters of the Co-operative Union in Manchester.  We had the good fortune to fall in with Vansittart Neale, and Tom Hughes, both of whom have passed away, and with Mr. Holyoake, who, with the exception of Mr. Ludlow, is now the sole survivor of that noble group of practical philanthropists, the Christian Socialists.  Mr. J.C.  Gray, who succeeded Mr. Vansittart Neale as the General Secretary of the Co-operative Union, gave us invaluable help and continues to do so to this day.  The leaders of the English movement sympathised with our efforts.  The Union paid us the compliment of constituting our first converts its Irish Section.  Liberal support was given out of the central English funds towards the cost of the missionary work which was to spread co-operative light in the sister isle.  We can never forget the generosity of the workingmen in England in giving their aid to the Irish farmers, especially when it is remembered that they had no sanguine anticipations for the success of our efforts and no prospect of advantages to themselves if we did succeed.

It must be admitted that the outlook was not altogether rosy.  Agricultural co-operation had never succeeded in England, where it seemed to be accepted as one of the disappointing limitations of the co-operative movement that it did not apply to rural communities in these islands.  There were also in Ireland the peculiar difficulties arising from ceaseless political and agrarian agitation.  It was naturally asked—­did Irish farmers possess the qualities out of which co-operators are made?  Had they commercial experience or business education?  Had they business capacity?  Would they display that confidence in each other which is essential to successful association, or indeed that confidence in themselves without which there can be no business enterprise?  Could they ever be induced to form themselves into societies, and to adopt, and loyally adhere to those rules and regulations by which alone equitable distribution of the responsibility and profit among the participants in the joint undertaking can be assured, and harmony and successful working be rendered possible?  Then, our best-informed Irish critics assured us that voluntary association for humdrum business purposes, devoid of some religious or political incentive, was alien to the Celtic temperament