of their authors
and, be it said also, of the country for whose upliftment and
betterment they were intended, they have endured greatly, and greatly
fulfilled their purpose.

It is conceded by all who have any knowledge of the subject that the
economic decadence of Ireland is not due to any lack of natural
resources; neither is it due to insufficiency of capital or absence of
workers. It is due to want of initiative, want of enterprise, want of
business method, want of confidence, and want of education on the
right lines. The education which should have been fashioned to fit the
youth of Ireland for a life of work and industry and usefulness in
their own land was invented with the express object of making of them
"happy English children." There are possibly a few hundred millions
sterling of Irish money, belonging in the main to the farmers and
well-to-do shopkeepers, lying idle in Irish banks, and the irony of it
is that these savings of the Irish are invested in British
enterprises. They help to enrich the British plutocrat and to provide
employment for the British worker, whilst the vast natural resources
of Ireland remain undeveloped and the cream of Ireland's productive
power, in the shape of its workers, betake themselves to other lands
to assist in strengthening the structure and stability of other
nations, when they should be engaged in raising the fabric of a
prosperous commonwealth at home.

Those, however, who would blame Ireland for its present position of
industrial stagnation forget that it was not always thus--they do not
bear it in mind that Ireland had a great commercial past, that it had
its own mercantile marine doing direct trade with foreign countries,
that it had flourishing industries and factories and mills all over
the country, but that all these were killed and destroyed and driven
out of existence by the cruel trade policy of England, which decreed
the death of every Irish industry or manufacture which stood in the
way of its own industrial progress.

Those who sought the economic reconstruction of the country had
accordingly to contend against a very evil inheritance. The commercial
spirit had been destroyed; it should be educated anew. The desire to
foster home products and manufactures had ceased to exist; it should
be re-born and a patriotic preference for home manufactures instilled
into the people. Pride in one's labour--the very essence of
efficiency--had gone out of the country. It