sistants in
secondary schools are paid about L80 a year. They have no security of
tenure; they have no register of teachers as a guarantee of efficiency.

The other problems which immediately confront the Irish government are
the establishment of a private bill legislation and a reform of the
Irish Poor Law. With regard to the private bill legislation I will say
no more than that it has always formed part of the Unionist policy for
Ireland, and that I agree fully with the arguments by which Mr. Walter
Long shows the necessity and justice for such a reform.

Finally, having given to the Irish farmers the security of a freehold in
their holdings at home, and a free entrance into the protected markets
of Great Britain; having assisted the development of rural industries of
the country; having placed Irish education on a sound and intelligible
basis, it would be necessary for the Unionist Party to undertake a
reform of the Poor Law in Ireland. Whether this reform will be
undertaken the same time as the larger social problems of England, with
which the party is pledged to deal, may be a matter of political
expediency, but there is no reason why the reform which is so urgently
required in Ireland should have to await the adoption of a scheme for
England. In outlining the problems, the supreme necessity is the
abolition of the present workhouse system. The Vice-Regal Commission and
the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws are in agreement as to the guiding
principles of reform. They recommend classification by institutions of
all the present inmates of the workhouses; the sick in the hospital, the
aged and infirm in alms-houses; the mentally defective in asylums. They
suggest the bringing together into one institution of all the inmates of
one class from a number of neighbouring workhouses. The sick should be
sent to existing Poor Law or County hospitals, strengthened by the
addition of cottage hospitals in certain districts, while children must
be boarded out. The able-bodied paupers, if well conducted, might be
placed in labour colonies; if ill conducted, in detention colonies. If
these are established, they must be controlled by the State and not by
County authorities. Of course, the resources of the existing Unions are
much too limited to undertake such sweeping reforms, and the county must
be substituted for the Union as the area of charge. The establishment of
the Public Assistance authority will relieve us from the greates