of the State in the pre-famine times, and upon the system of
doles and somewhat objectless relief works of the latter half of the
nineteenth century; but the policy of the new departure now under review
was no less notable a departure from the paternalism of the Congested
Districts Board. When that body was called into existence it was thought
necessary to rely on persons nominated by the Government. When the
Department was created eight years later it was found possible, owing to
the broadening of the basis of local government and to the moral and
social effect of the new movement, to rely largely on the advice and
assistance of persons selected by the people themselves.

The two departments are in constant consultation as to the co-ordination
of their work, so as to avoid conflict of administrative system and
sociological principle in adjoining districts; and much has already been
done in this direction. My own experience has not only made me a firm
believer in the principle of self-help, but I carry my belief to the
extreme length of holding that the poorer a community is the more
essential is it to throw it as much as possible on its own resources, in
order to develop self-reliance. I recognise, however, the undesirability
of too sudden changes of system in these matters. Meanwhile, I may add
in this connection that the Wyndham Land Act enormously increases the
importance of the Congested Districts Board in regard to its main
function--that of dealing directly with congestion, by the purchase and
resettlement of estates, the migration of families, and the enlargement
of holdings.[46]

I have now said enough about the aims and objects, the constitution and
powers, and the relations with other Governmental institutions, of the
new Department, to enable the reader to form a fairly accurate estimate
of its general character, scope and purpose. From what it is I shall
pass in the next chapter to what it does, and there I must describe its
everyday work in some detail. But I wish I could also give the reader an
adequate picture of the surge of activities raised by the first plunge
of the Department into Irish life and thought. After a time the torrent
of business made channels for itself and went on in a more orderly
fashion; practical ideas and promising openings were sifted out at an
early stage of their approach to the Department from those which were
neither one nor the other; time was economised, work distributed, an