st regard, and it is, therefore, with supreme satisfaction that I
have during our stay so often heard the hope expressed that a brighter
day is dawning upon Ireland. I shall eagerly await the fulfilment of
this hope. Its realisation will, under Divine Providence, depend largely
upon the steady development of self-reliance and co-operation, upon
better and more practical education, upon the growth of industrial and
commercial enterprise, and upon that increase of mutual toleration and
respect which the responsibility my Irish people now enjoy in the public
administration of their local affairs is well-fitted to
teach."--_Message of the King to the Irish People_, 1st August, 1903.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NEW MOVEMENT: ITS FOUNDATION ON SELF-HELP.

The movement for the reorganisation of Irish agricultural and industrial
life, to which I have already frequently referred, must now be described
in practical operation. Before I do this, however, there are two lines
of criticism which the very mention of a new movement may suggest, and
which I must anticipate. Every year has its tale of new movements,
launched by estimable persons whose philanthropic zeal is not balanced
by the judgment required to discriminate between schemes which possess
the elements of permanence, and those which depend upon the enthusiasm
or financial support of their promoters, and are in their nature
ephemeral. There is, consequently, a widespread and well justified
mistrust of novel schemes for the industrial regeneration of Ireland. I
confess to having had my ingenuity severely taxed on some occasions to
find a sympathetic circumlocution wherewith to show cause for declining
to join a new movement, my real reason being an inward conviction that
nothing except resolutions would be moved. In the complex problem of
building up the economic and social life of a people with such a
history as ours, we must resist the temptation to multiply schemes
which, however well intended, are but devices for enabling individuals
to devolve their responsibilities upon the community or upon the
Government, and which owe their bubble reputation and brief popularity
to this unconscious humouring of our chief national defect. On the
contrary, we must seek to instil into the mind of each individual the
too little recognised importance of his own contribution to the sum of
national achievement. The building of character must be our paramount
object, as it is the condition