[61] See “Prospectus of the Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast,” 1910-11, pp. 55 and 57-58.  Reading, Grammar, and Simple Arithmetic are taught.

[62] See Report of the Congested Districts Board, 1909-11.

[63] See Report of Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland (Cd. 4097); especially a Memorandum by Sir Horace Plunkett, published as a separate pamphlet by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.

[64] See Chapter XIV.

[65] Annual Report (1910) of the “Irish Association for the Prevention of Intemperance.”  The estimate is that of Dr. Dawson Burns.  By the Licensing (Ireland) Act of 1902, the issue of any new licenses was prohibited.

[66] I write before the scheme has been fully discussed in Parliament.

[67] It is scarcely necessary for me to remind the reader that the word “Ulster,” as used in current political dialectics, is misleading.  Part of Ulster is overwhelmingly Catholic; in part the population is divided between the two creeds, and in two counties it is overwhelmingly Protestant.  In the whole province the Protestants are in a majority of 150,000, but since a number of Protestants vote Nationalist, the representation of the province is almost equal, the Unionists holding seventeen seats out of thirty-three.

[68] “Ireland in the Eighteenth Century,” “Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland,” “Clerical Influences.”

[69] See “Democracy and Liberty.”

[70] Many Unionists are to be found in the same breath prophesying Catholic tyranny under Home Rule and averring without any evidence that clerical influence caused the repudiation in 1907 of the Council Bill, because it placed education under a semi-popular body.

[71] “Religious Intolerance under Home Rule:  Some Opinions of Leading Irish Protestants,” pamphlet (1911) compiled by J. McVeagh, M.P.

[72] The Census of 1911 shows that the population of Ireland is still falling.  The province of Leinster, mainly Catholic, alone shows a small increase, derived from the counties of Dublin (including Dublin City) and Kildare.  In Ulster, Down and Antrim, which include the city of Belfast, alone show an increase, but not so great as that of County Dublin.

CHAPTER X

THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE

I.

THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM.

It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire.  The historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish Constitution.