. The really strange thing is, not that representative
Irishmen should have met together to consider and prescribe for the
deplorable economic condition of their country, but that they should not
also, like the South African Conference, have drafted a Constitution for
Ireland, on the sound ground that a system of government which had
promoted and sustained the evils they described could never, with the
best will in the world, become a good government for Ireland. Yet for a
brief space of time these men actually had Home Rule, and by virtue of
that privilege they did better work for Ireland in six months than had
been done in two centuries.

What is more, they used the Home Rule principle in their recommendations
for the establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Technical
Instruction. "We think it essential," they reported on p. 101, "that the
new Department should be in touch with the public opinion of the classes
whom its work concerns, and should rely largely for its success upon
their active assistance and co-operation." Its chief, they added, should
be a Minister directly responsible to Parliament, and on p. 103 they
advocated a Consultative Council, whose functions should be--(1) To keep
the Department in direct touch with the public opinion of those classes
whom the work of the Ministry concerns; and (2) to distribute some of
the responsibility for administration amongst those classes. Now these,
in Ireland, were revolutionary proposals. The idea of any part of the
Government "being in touch with public opinion" was wholly new. The idea
of "distributing responsibility for administration" amongst the subjects
of administration was startlingly novel. Ireland, both before and after
the Union, had always been governed on a diametrically opposite
principle. Since the Union, when Irish departmental Ministers, never
responsible to the people, disappeared, not one of the host of nominated
Irish Boards was legally amenable to Irish public opinion. Not one had
a separate Minister responsible even to the Parliament at Westminster,
which was not an Irish Parliament. _A fortiori_, not one relied on the
co-operation and advice of the classes for whose benefit it was supposed
to exist.

Proposed, nevertheless, by a group of representative Irishmen, the
scheme for a democratically constituted Department of Agriculture passed
smoothly into law as soon as the machinery for ascertaining public
opinion on the matters at issue