ed that though he was a Unionist and a Protestant
he did not forget that he had sprung from the Clan O'Cahan. The
stimulation given to national thought and purpose spread in many
directions. A new race of Irish priests was being educated on more
thoroughly Irish lines, and they went forth to their duties with the
inspiration, as it were, of a new call. A crusade was started against
emigration, which was fast draining the country of its reserves of
brain, brawn and beauty. The dullness of the country-side, an
important factor in forcing the young and adventurous abroad, was
relieved by the new enthusiasm for Irish games and pastimes and
recreations--for the _seanchus_, the _sgoruidheacht_, the
_ceilidhe_ and the _Feiseanna_.

In giving to the young especially a new pride in their country and in
their own, great and distinctive national heritage, it did a great
deal to strengthen the national character and to make it more
independent and self-reliant. It started the great work of rooting out
the slavery which centuries of dependency and subjection had bred into
the marrow of the race. Mr Arthur Griffith has admitted that the
present generation could never have effected this work had not Parnell
and his generation done their brave labour before them, but considered
in themselves the achievements of the Gaelic League can only be
described as mighty both in the actual revolution it wrought in the
moral, intellectual and spiritual sphere, in the reaction it created
against the coarser materialism of imported modes and manners, and in
the new spirit which it breathed into the entire people.

Coincident with the foundation of the Gaelic League, other
regenerative influences were also at work. These aimed at the economic
reconstruction and the industrial development of the country by the
inculcation of the principles of self-help, self-reliance and
co-operation, and by the wider dissemination of technical instruction
and agricultural education. Ireland, by reason, I suppose, of its
condition, its arrested development and its psychology, is a country
much given to "new movements," most of which have a very brief
existence. They are born but to breathe and then expire. In the ease,
however, of the Gaelic League, and the movements for co-operation
amongst the farmers, and for technical instruction in the arts and
crafts most suitable to the country, these movements were conceived
and created strongly to endure. And to the credit