tions in planting in apparently uncongenial soil sound
economic principles. But our success was mainly due, as I shall show
later, to our having used the associative instincts of the Irish peasant
to help out the working of our theories; and we became convinced that if
a tithe of our priests, public men, national school teachers, and
members of our local bodies had received a university education, we
should have made much more rapid progress.

I hardly know how to describe the mental atmosphere in which we were
working. It would be no libel upon the public opinion upon which we
sought to make an impression to say that it really allowed no question
to be discussed on its merits. Public opinion on social and economic
questions is changing now, but I cannot associate the change with any
influence emanating from institutions of higher education. In other
countries, so far as my investigations have extended, the universities
do guide economic thought and have a distinct though wholly unofficial
function as a court of appeal upon questions relating to the material
progress of the communities amongst which they are situated. Of such
institutions there are in Ireland only two which could be expected to
direct in any large way the thought of the country upon economic and
other important national questions--Maynooth, and Trinity College,
Dublin. Whether in their widely different spheres of influence these two
institutions could, under conditions other than those prevailing, have
so met the requirements of the country as to have obviated what is at
present an urgent necessity for a complete reorganisation of higher
education need not be discussed; but it is essential to my argument that
I should set forth clearly the results of my own observation upon their
influence, or rather lack of influence, upon the people among whom I
have worked.

The influence of Maynooth, actual and potential, can hardly be
exaggerated, but it is exercised indirectly upon the secular thought of
the country. It is not its function to make a direct impression. It is
in fact only a professional--I had almost said a technical--school. It
trains its students, most admirably I am told, in theology, philosophy,
and the studies subsidiary to these sciences, but always, for the vast
majority of its students, with a distinctly practical and definite
missionary end in view. There is, I believe, an arts course of modest
scope, designed rather to meet the deficienci