ment of the native language by the Irish clergy, who for the last generation or two have had the dominant voice in primary education in Ireland, and still more to the effects of that close intercourse with America which has had more to do, perhaps, than any other single cause with the change in Irish ideas, and of which a very curious illustration is to be found in the rapid anglicising of Irish surnames in the west of Ireland, the districts which can now be regarded as Irish-speaking are so few and far between that it is scarcely unfair to say, with Swift, of the efforts of the Gaelic League that when nothing's left that's worth defence, they build a magazine.' It may, indeed, be doubted whether the extension of the use of Irish into districts from which it has died out would be productive of any national benefit; and, were there any substantial likelihood of such a result being achieved by the operations of the League, we should feel indisposed to rejoice at the activity of an association which commends the cultivation of the lost language as the most 'effective means of recalling to vigorous life the decaying 'nationality of Ireland,' and as the most essential factor of 'Irish nationality.' The promoters of the Gaelic League are, indeed, not wholly untainted by that infirmity which in Ireland tends to the conclusion that nothing is really national which is not Nationalist; and some of its aims. appear, unfortunately, to have more concern with politics than philology. But, in so far as it seeks to preserve the vitality of the most ancient of the living languages of Europe in its last outposts, its efforts deserve the approval of many who cannot sympathise with the ulterior objects of those whose interest in the movement appears to be prompted mainly by political, not to say anti-English, motives. The proposition upon which the latter rely-that a nation cannot retain its individuality without a national language-is confuted not only by the example of other nations, but by the history of Ireland herself; and the task of re-creating the Irish language in a country from which it has almost died out, as the living language of a people which the last seven centuries have left perhaps the most mixed in Europe, is one which is best designated, in the language of Lord Russell of Killowen, as 'absolutely futile and impracticable.'

We have alluded to the decline in the rate at which for several decades, and since the potato famine, the population of Ireland has been reduced from considerably more than eight millions to barely four millions and a half, as showing that the shrinkage has reached cr nearly reached-the

limit at which it no longer becomes necessary to throw off a surplus for which room cannot be found at home, and as evidence of the increasing prosperity of those who remain. The statistics of emigration show a remarkable diminution in the volume of the stream which has so long and so steadily flowed westward; and although quite recently a considerable outcry has been raised at the increase noted in the returns for the spring months of the present year, it is unquestionable that the impulse to emigration is to a great extent stayed. For several years the numbers have fallen steadily; and there is no reason to question the validity of the official explanation of recent fluctuations-viz. that it is due to the increased demand for labour in the United States. To this may, however, be added the influence exerted last winter by the dread of a possible conscription. While we fully agree that the rapid depletion of the Irish population, through emigration, in the last half-century is evidence, were evidence wanted, of the comparative poverty and industrial weakness of Ireland, we have never been able to sympathise with those who deplore the failure of the Irish population to combat the operation of the natural law which decrees a constant exodus from countries thickly populated and slender in resources to lands less crowded, and presenting more opulent possibilities. With the views of those who denounce emigration as in itself pernicious and deplorable we have absolutely no sympathy; nor can we understand how either the permanent benefit of Ireland or the happiness of the people themselves can be served by the maintenance of a population in excess of the resources available for their support, or beyond the economic possibilities of the country. But it is matter for legitimate satisfaction that the tide of emigration has been stayed by natural and wholesome causes, and that the leakage is diminishing to a point which will shortly represent little more than the outflow natural to every civilised community. It is a significant evidence of the altered conditions of emigration from Ireland, and of the fact that the emigrants no longer represent the stern pressure of physical necessity, but are voluntary seekers of new homes, that the Congested Districts Board have never found it necessary to resort to their powers to assist emigration. No doubt that body has done something to provide an alternative in the more congested areas by its migration schemes, and by its useful system of enlarging small holdings to the point at which they may be expected to afford adequate means of livelihood to their

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occupiers. But we think the improved condition of the country fully warrants us in the prediction that no revival of emigration on a large scale as a consequence of acute distress will be witnessed in the future, and that no occasion will be found for such devoted philanthropy as that of which the public has lately been reminded in Sir Edward Fry's admirable memoir of the late Mr. James Tuke.

The beneficial influences of the railway extension, to which we have referred, must have operated but slowly had they been left to work their effects unaided by any active efforts of the State to turn to account the machinery thus provided for the developement of the material resources of the backward districts of the country. But the extension of the railways proved to be a part only of a larger policy. Possibly no measure of the past forty years has had more important or more beneficial influence upon the economic condition of Ireland than the Congested Districts Board Act, which is the enduring memorial of the second and more constructive period of Mr. Arthur Balfour's Chief Secretaryship. The apparently hopeless condition of chronic poverty which has for generations stamped with misery vast regions of the west has always presented one of the most difficult of the many problems afforded by the deficiencies of Ireland in material resources. At each recurring famine the wild wastes of the west have defied every effort of public munificence and private philanthropy to give adequate succour to a population barely removed, even in its most prosperous moments, from the verge of starvation. Alike remote and barren, but thickly crowded with a people deficient in all the comforts, and barely supplied with the necessaries, of life, these districts have always yielded to the first onslaught of famine; while even in times of comparative plenty they have been barely self-supporting, and incapable of contributing anything to the common stock of the national resources. We have no intention of attempting in the present article to describe the operations of the Congested Districts Board, as recounted in the eight reports published since its inauguration in 1892. They are patent to any observer; but its achievements are both so considerable in themselves and so encouraging, as showing what may be effected by judicious methods, that it will be no digression from our main purpose to summarise the objects aimed at by the Board, and the broad results already attained.

By the Act of Parliament creating it, the districts em

braced by the activity of the Congested Districts Board are thus defined:

'Where at the commencement of this Act more than 20 per cent. of the population of a county live in electoral divisions, of which the total rateable value, when divided by the number of the population, gives a sum of less than one pound ten shillings for each individual, those divisions . . . shall form a separate county (in this Act referred to as a congested districts county).'

Of such counties or districts there existed in 1892 as many as 84, distributed among eight counties through the northwest, west, and south-west of Ireland. They embraced an area of some three and a half million acres, or one-sixth of the whole surface of Ireland, and were inhabited by a population of rather more than half a million, the poor-law valuation per head being just above one pound. The Board was empowered to take steps for improving these districts in respect of such matters as agricultural developement, forestry, breeding of live-stock and poultry, amalgamation of small holdings, migration and emigration, fishing, and the developement of suitable industries. The first report of the Board contains a statement of the character of the problem set before it, intended to serve as a base line from which its future work might be judged and measured, which so concisely describes the districts and their population as they were in 1892 that we cannot do better than cite it here:

In the first place practically all the inhabitants of congested districts in Ireland are in possession of small plots of land, so that the developement of agriculture and the improvement of the breeds of live stock and poultry are of primary and universal importance. Secondary sources of income vary in different districts. In many localities the results of sea-fishing are as valuable as the produce of the land. In other districts wage-earning in England, Scotland, and elsewhere is an indispensable source of livelihood. Weaving, knitting, sewing, kelpmaking, sale of seaweed, sale of moss and peat, sale of illicit whisky, donations from relatives in America, occasional employment at home are sources of income of greater or less importance in different localities. . . . In some of the inland mountain glens where the inhabitants have very small patches of land tilled in primitive and unskilled methods, where their cattle and sheep have deteriorated in breeding and diminished in numbers, where little effort is made by the men to earn money through migratory labour or otherwise-in such mountain glens are to be found those people who endure the most comfortless and cheerless lives of all the inhabitants of congested districts in Ireland. In a "good year" they are little more than free from the dread of hunger, while a complete or partial failure of their crops involves as a consequence proportionately greater or less suffering from insufficient food.'

The report goes on to observe that the resources and earnings of a whole family in many instances do not exceed a total of 157. a year, that the standard of living in even the most prosperous of these districts is very low, the diet being altogether vegetable, that the dwellings are mean and comfortless, and the clothing ragged and scanty.

The method adopted by the Congested Districts Board to meet the difficulties it was established to remedy have naturally followed three main lines of activity. Agricul ture and fisheries were obviously the two most important sources of wealth. A third was found in the developement of a number of minor industries suited to the cottage and the farm, a work in which excellent results had already been achieved by a body known as the Irish Industries Association. In all three directions remarkable and most satisfactory results have been attained, and that without doing violence to the golden principle that the salvation of these districts must be worked out by the people themselves; the part of the Board being wisely limited as far as possible to the business of providing instruction and opportunities for those who were found willing to struggle to improve their own condition. While much has been done for the improvement of agriculture and the developement of subsidiary industries, it is undoubtedly in the improvement of the fisheries of the west coast that the most remarkable results have been achieved. By a curious mockery of nature the squalid poverty which has oppressed the inhabitants of these wretched districts has reigned in the near neighbourhood of the sources of abundant wealth. The congested districts lie for the most part along the fringe of one of the most deeply indented coast-lines in Europe, and the adjacent seas are filled with a practically inexhaustible supply of fish. But the inhabitants of the western coast, curiously deficient in aptitude for a seafaring life, and without the means of equipping fishing boats fit to encounter the winds and waves of the western ocean, had been unable to utilise the sources of wealth which nature had placed so close at hand. They had neither the skill nor the appliances necessary for reaping the marine harvest so close to their doors. They were without proper fishing-boats to catch the fish, and they equally lacked a market for the fish when caught, save where they chanced to possess piers and harbours to which their boats could be brought. The Board had, therefore, to create the fishing industry by coping with the double task of instructing the people in the management of boats and