p, and the establishment of a complete system of
Irish Local Government in 1898 another. In the following year came the
Act setting up the Department of Agriculture, and in 1903 Mr. Wyndham's
great Land Purchase Act. Then came the strange "devolutionist" episode,
arising from the appointment of Sir Antony (now Lord) MacDonnell to the
post of Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, the Government who selected
him being fully aware that he was in favour of some change in the
government of Ireland. He entered into relations with a group of
prominent Irishmen, headed by Lord Dunraven, who were thinking out a
scheme for a mild measure of devolution. When the fact became known,
there was an explosion of anger among Irish Unionists. Mr. Wyndham, who
had been a popular Chief Secretary, resigned office, and was succeeded
by Mr. Walter Long; perhaps the most dramatic and significant example in
modern times of the policy of governing Ireland in deliberate and direct
defiance of the wishes and sentiments of the vast majority of Irishmen.

The Liberal Government of 1906, coming into office under a pledge to
refrain from a full Home Rule measure, confined itself to the
introduction of the Irish Council Bill of 1907, which, rightly, in my
opinion, was repudiated by the Irish people, and accordingly dropped.
But the Government was in general sympathy with Nationalist Ireland, so
that a number of useful measures were added to the statute books; for
example, the Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906, empowering Rural Councils,
with the aid of State credit, to acquire land for labourers' plots and
cottages; the Town Tenants Act, extending the principle of compensation
for improvements at the termination of a lease to the urban tenant; the
very important Irish Universities Act of 1908, which gave to Roman
Catholics facilities for higher education which they had lacked for
centuries, and, lastly, Mr. Birrell's Land Act of 1909, which was
designed partly to meet the imminent collapse of Land Purchase, owing to
the failure of the financial arrangements made under the Wyndham Act of
1903, and partly to extend the powers of the Congested Districts Board.

To these measures must be added another which was not confined to
Ireland, but which has exercised a most potent influence, and by no
means a wholly beneficial influence, on Irish life and Irish finance,
the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, under which the enormous sum of two
and three-quarter millions is no