al Report of the
Irish Local Government Board for year ending March, 1902.)

Our impression as travellers was that the Irish County Councils do not
yet spend enough money on their roads.

THE HOME RULE CASE

THE CASE THAT HAS CHANGED--(CONTINUED)

i.--THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS
ii.--THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE
iii.--OLD-AGE PENSIONS
iv.--THE UNIVERSITIES

"Although while I live I shall oppose separation, yet it is my
opinion that continuing the Legislative Union must endanger the
connection."

O'CONNELL
(1834).

CHAPTER III.

THE HOME RULE CASE

But Land Purchase and County Councils are only part of the great change
that has come over Ireland since 1893.

There are other great transformations. There is the redemption of the
congested districts. There is the revival of agriculture. There is the
Old Age Pensions Act. Finally, there is the reform of the Universities.

THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD

Take, first, the daring policy of social renovation by which the
forlorn peasantry of the West are being saved from the grey wilderness
into which they had been thrust by the landlordism of 1830 to 1880.

It is the habit of the Unionist Press to claim the whole of this work
as their own. That is rather bold of a party that lifted not a finger
while these people--said by those who know them to be the best
peasantry in Europe--were driven from the rich lands of Ireland to till
the barren moorland and scratch the very rocks on the shores of the
Atlantic. The Tories do not explain why they allowed the House of Lords
for a whole half century to seal up the exile of these poor folk by
rejecting every measure proposed for their welfare. As a matter of
fact, of course, the policy of redeeming the congested districts was
not first proposed either by the Tories or by the Liberals, but by the
Irish members themselves.

The Tory claim is based, of course, on the fact that the first step
towards action by the British Government dates from the famous Western
tour of Mr. Arthur Balfour in the early nineties. Perhaps Mr. Balfour
was tired of the monotony of five years of coercion. At any rate, he
took that journey, and it was the best act of his political life. He
travelled along that misty fringe of the Atlantic. He saw--as we saw
last summer, and I saw in