ited instincts of the people, and, therefore, moved them to action.
Next they called for, and in due season obtained, a department of
government with adequate powers and means to aid in developing the
resources of the country, so far as this end could be attained without
transgressing the limits of beneficial State interference with the
business of the people. In its constitution this department was so
linked with the representative institutions of the country that the
people soon began to feel that they largely controlled its policy and
were responsible for its success. Meanwhile, the progress of economic
thought in the country had made such rapid strides that, in the
administration of State assistance, the principle of self-help could be
rigidly insisted upon and was willingly submitted to. The result is that
a situation has been created which is as gratifying as it may appear to
be paradoxical. Within the scope and sphere of the movement the Irish
people are now, without any sacrifice of industrial character, combining
reliance upon government with reliance upon themselves.

That a movement thus conceived should so rapidly have overcome its
initial difficulties and should, I might almost add, have passed beyond
the experimental stage, will suggest to any thoughtful reader that above
and beyond the removal by legislation of obstacles to progress--and much
has been accomplished in this way of recent years--there must have been
new, positive influences at work upon the national mind. These will be
found in the growing recognition of the fact that the path of progress
lies along distinctively Irish lines, and that otherwise it will not be
trodden by the Irish people. Much good in the same direction has been
done, too, by the generous and authoritative admission by England that
the future development of Ireland should be assisted and promoted 'with
a full and constant regard to the special traditions of the
country.'[52] But after all, while these concessions to Irish
sentiment, vitally important though they be, may speed us on our road to
national regeneration, they will not take us far. It remains for us
Irishmen to realise--and the chief value of all the work I have
described consists in the degree in which it forces us to realise--the
responsibility which now rests with ourselves. We have been too long a
prey to that deep delusion, which, because the ills of the country we
love were in past days largely caused from wit