This education question has got to be thrashed out by a Home Ruled Ireland, and the sooner the better.  After Home Rule the Treasury grant will stop, and Ireland will have to raise and apportion the funds herself, and set her house in order.  At whatever sacrifice of religious scruples, and, it is needless to add that to the Roman Catholic hierarchy the sacrifice will be the greatest, the Irish people must control and finance its schools, whether through a central department alone, or through local authorities as well.  There is no reason in the world why a compromise should not be arrived at which would secure vastly increased efficiency and leave the teaching of denominational religion uninjured.  Other countries, where the same religions exist side by side, have attained that compromise.  Ireland will be judged by her success in attaining it.

Another important question is the treatment of the Congested Districts.  More than a third of Ireland is now under the benevolent jurisdiction of a despotic Board.[62] So long as its funds are raised from general Imperial taxation, the inevitable tendency is to shirk the thorough discussion of this grave subject, to lay the responsibility on Great Britain, to acquiesce in a policy of extreme paternalism, and to appeal for higher and higher doles from the Treasury.  This cannot go on.  Whoever, in the eyes of Divine Justice, was originally responsible for the condition of the submerged west, and for the ruin of the evicted tenants, Ireland, if she wants Home Rule, must shoulder the responsibility herself, and think out the whole question independently.  The Congested Districts Board has done, and continues to do, good work in the purchase and resettlement of estates; but even in this sphere there are wide differences of opinion as to the proper methods and policy to be employed, especially with regard to the division of grasslands and the migration of landless men.  Its other remedial work (part of which is now taken over by the Department of Agriculture under the Land Act of 1909), in encouraging fisheries, industries, and farm improvements out of State money, is open to criticism on the ground of its tendency to pauperize and weaken character.  I do not care to pronounce on the controversy, though I think that there is much to be said for the view that money is best spent by encouraging agricultural co-operation.  Many able and distinguished men have devoted their minds to the subject, but it is plain that Ireland as a whole has not thought, and cannot think, the matter out in a responsible spirit, and that the only way of reaching a truly Irish decision is through an Irish Parliament, which both raises and votes money for the purpose.[63] The reinstatement of evicted tenants teems with practical difficulties which can only be solved in the same way.  As long as Great Britain remains responsible, errors are liable to be made which one day may be deeply regretted.