on for attention to the national
housekeeping.

OLD-AGE PENSIONS

One of the most remarkable events of the last few years has been the
unexpected side-share of Ireland in the great social legislation of
Great Britain. Even the Irish members themselves have scarcely foreseen
how immensely Ireland, being the poorest partner in the United Kingdom,
would benefit by a policy "tender to the poor." The most conspicuous
example of that effect has been Old-age Pensions. Old-age Pensions have
fallen on Ireland as a shower of gold. Her share is already well over
L2,000,000. The great new fact in Irish social welfare is that she now
draws that great draught from the Imperial Exchequer.

Travelling along the Atlantic coast last summer, I inquired in many
local post-offices as to the amount of pensions given weekly in those
little grey villages. I found that often the old-age pensioners would
number between 100 and 200 in small villages of less than 2,000 people.
The emigration of the youth has left a disproportionate number of the
old, and it is not necessary to bring any railing accusation against
the honesty of the Irish race in order to understand why it is that
Old-age Pensions have done so much for Ireland. But the fact remains,
and it carries with it a great and unexpected relief to the Irish
ratepayer.[33]

THE NEW UNIVERSITY ACT

Last, but not least, we have the great stimulus given to higher
education by the passage of Mr. Birrell's Irish University Act. For a
whole generation the progress of higher education in Ireland has been
held up by a barren and wearisome religious quarrel. Now that quarrel
has vanished, and Ireland is organising a great system of University
education for her Catholic as well as her Protestant youth. Not the
least stimulating experience of the Eighty Club in Ireland was the day
which we spent, under the guidance of the distinguished Principal, at
Cork University College, where we saw Catholics and Protestants, men
and women, young and old, working together in friendly harmony in the
splendid buildings which have sprung up to house the undergraduates of
the south-west. The same process is going on at Dublin, Galway, and
Belfast. The machinery is being rapidly prepared for training up in the
best possible atmosphere of mutual tolerance the new rulers of Home
Rule Ireland.

* * * * *

Such have been the great Acts of Parliament which have created a
changed si