nly about 12 per cent. of the population was established by
law and supported by tithes levied on the whole country. Technical
education was inaccessible to the great bulk of the nation; and in no
department of public education, of any grade or by whomsoever
administered, was any attention paid to Irish history, the Irish
language, Irish literature, or any subject which might lead young
Irishmen to a better knowledge and understanding of the special problems
of their country and its special claims to the love and respect of its
children.

That was the Ireland of fifty years ago. It is an Ireland which at the
present day lives only on the lips of anti-British orators and
journalists. It is an Ireland as dead as the France of Louis XIV. Of the
abuses and disabilities just recounted not one survives to-day. The
measures by which they have been removed place to the credit of the
United Kingdom a record of reform the details of which, for the benefit
of friends or foes, may be here very briefly set down.

Religious Equality

In 1869 the Protestant Episcopal Church was disestablished and
disendowed, and is now--many Churchmen believe to its great spiritual
advantage--on the same level as regards its means of support as every
other denomination in Ireland. It may be mentioned that the Roman
Catholic Church in Ireland was long in the enjoyment of a State subsidy
for the education of its clergy, a subsidy commuted in 1869 for a
capital sum of 370,000 pounds.

Land Reform

As comparisons have been drawn between the systems of government in
Ireland and in Poland, let us consider for a moment the condition of the
Polish rural population under German rule. It must be noted that the
recent promises of Polish autonomy made by Germany--obviously for
military and temporary reasons--refer only to those portions of Polish
territory held by other States. No change is to be made in the position
of Prussian Poland. Here, for many years, it has been, and still is, the
avowed object of the Prussian Government either to extirpate or forcibly
Teutonise this Slavonic population, and to replant the country with
German colonists. The German Chancellor in 1900, Prince von Buelow,
defended this anti-Polish policy in the cynical saying that "rabbits
breed faster than hares," and the meaner animal, the Pole, must
therefore be drastically kept down in favour of the German. Between 1886
and 1906 the Prussian Government was spending over a milli