ith its attendant vices of restlessness and idleness, the
emigration of wage-earners, the discouragement of industry under
Governments indifferent to the administration of law and the development
of national resources, have all contributed to the Dantean horrors of
the Irish workhouse system. These poor people are an excrescence on the
body of Ireland which good government, if it does not wholly remove, may
reduce nearly to vanishing point. Hitherto the chief rewards and
blessings of British administration in Ireland have gone to the hard
voters and to the strong agitators. It is time for the Unionist Party to
think of the hapless, the helpless, the voteless, and, therefore
voiceless, elements in Irish life. Ireland, as she becomes better
educated, gives more thought and truer thought than formerly to her
social and economic problems. Her gratitude and loyalty will go in
abundant measure to those who take counsel with her about these problems
and help her to solve them. The Government which cleans up many sad
relics of the past by a complete reform of the Irish Poor Law system
will put all Irishmen and Irishwomen under a deep sense of obligation to
it. Policy, not less than duty, should give this reform a place in the
forefront of the Unionist Party's constructive programme for Ireland.

XIX

IRISH EDUCATION UNDER THE UNION[89]

BY GODFREY LOCKER LAMPSON, M.P.

Education is probably the most sorrowfully dull of all dull subjects. It
is difficult to repress a yawn when the word is mentioned. Yet we owe
everything to it that we value most. Through it we become emancipated
citizens of the world. Through it we are able to appreciate what is
beautiful and what is ugly, what is right and what is wrong, what is
permanent and what is merely transitory. If the people of a country can
make it their boast that they are truly educated, they need boast of
little else, for all the rest will have been added unto them.

It will be found next to impossible to draw any argument for Home Rule
from the history of Irish Education during the last decade. Indeed, if a
Nationalist Parliament were now to be established in College Green, it
is more than probable that the progress made by educational reformers
since 1900 would be largely thrown away, and the prospects of still
further improvement endangered and perhaps destroyed.

What has been done in the domain of Irish Education, and what still
remains to be done? Leaving out of