e are
reasons to fear that the great majority of the apostates are of Irish
extraction, and not a few of them of Irish birth.'

[21] This view seems to be taken by the most influential spokesmen of
the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. See Evidence, _Royal Commission on
University Education in Ireland_, vol. iii., p. 238, Questions 8702-6.

[22] I may mention that of the co-operative societies organised by the
Irish Agricultural Organisation Society there are no fewer than 331
societies of which the local priests are the Chairmen, while to my own
knowledge during the summer and autumn of 1902, as many as 50,000
persons from all parts of Ireland were personally conducted over the
exhibit of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction at
the Cork Exhibition by their local clergy. The educational purpose of
these visits is explained in Chap. x. Again, in a great number of cases
the village libraries which have been recently started in Ireland with
the assistance of the Department (the books consisting largely of
industrial, economic, and technical works on agriculture), have been
organised and assisted by the Roman Catholic clergy.

CHAPTER V.

A PRACTICAL VIEW OF IRISH EDUCATION.

A little learning, we are told, is a dangerous thing; and in their
dealings with Irish education the English should have discovered that
this danger is accentuated when the little learning is combined with
much native wit. In the days when religious persecution was
universal--only, be it remembered, a few generations ago--it was the
policy of England to avert this danger by prohibiting, as far as
possible, the acquisition by Irish Roman Catholics of any learning at
all. After the Union, Englishmen began to feel their responsibility for
the state of Ireland, a state of poverty and distress which culminated
in the Famine. Knowledge was then no longer withheld: indeed the English
sincerely desired to dispel our darkness and enable us to share in the
wisdom, and so in the prosperity, of the predominant partner. In their
attempts to educate us they dealt with what they saw on the surface, and
moulded their educational principles upon what they knew; but they did
not know Ireland. Even if we excuse them for paying scant attention to
what they were told by Irishmen, they should have given more heed to the
reports of their own Royal Commissions.

We have so far seen that the Irish mind has been in regard to
economics, politics, and ev