So much to clear the ground in regard to the Home Rule controversy. I
shall now ask the reader to glance for a moment at the condition of
Ireland fifty years ago. At that time almost the whole agricultural
population were in the position of tenants-at-will, with no security
either against increased rents or arbitrary eviction. The housing of the
rural population, and especially of the agricultural labourers, was
wretched in the extreme. Local taxation and administration were wholly
in the hands of Grand Juries, bodies appointed by the Crown from among
the country gentlemen in each district. Irish Roman Catholics were
without any system of University education comparable to that which
Protestants had enjoyed for three hundred years in the University of
Dublin. A Church which, whatever its historic claims may have been,
numbered only about 12 per cent. of the population was established by
law and supported by tithes levied on the whole country. Technical
education was inaccessible to the great bulk of the nation; and in no
department of public education, of any grade or by whomsoever
administered, was any attention paid to Irish history, the Irish
language, Irish literature, or any subject which might lead young
Irishmen to a better knowledge and understanding of the special problems
of their country and its special claims to the love and respect of its
children.
That was the Ireland of fifty years ago. It is an Ireland which at the
present day lives only on the lips of anti-British orators and
journalists. It is an Ireland as dead as the France of Louis XIV. Of the
abuses and disabilities just recounted not one survives to-day. The
measures by which they have been removed place to the credit of the
United Kingdom a record of reform the details of which, for the benefit
of friends or foes, may be here very briefly set down.