and let at nominal rents. Nearly nine millions sterling have been voted for this purpose at low interest, with sinking fund, and up to the present date 47,000 cottages have been built, each with its plot of land, while several thousand more are sanctioned.

Of the results of the Labourers' Act a recent observer writes:

"The Irish agricultural labourer can now obtain a cottage with three rooms, a piggery, and garden allotment of an acre or half an acre, and for this he is charged a rent of one to two shillings a week ... These cottages by the wayside give a hopeful aspect to the country ... flowers are before the doors of the new cottages and creepers upon the walls. The labourer can keep pigs, poultry, and a goat, and grow his potatoes and vegetables in his garden allotment."[*]

Local Government

In 1898 a Local Government Bill was passed for Ireland which placed the administration of the poor law and other local affairs for rural districts on the same footing as in England. The rule of the Grand Juries, which had lasted for two and a half centuries, and which had, on the whole, carried on local affairs with credit and success, was now entirely swept away, and elected bodies were placed in full control of local taxation, administration, and patronage. In the case of the larger towns free municipal institutions had already existed for some sixty years. In these the franchise was now reduced, and is wide enough both in town and country to admit every class of the population. Since 1899 the new elective bodies have had important duties to fulfil in regard to the development of agriculture and technical instruction.

The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction

This new Irish Department of State grew out of a demand formulated after long inquiry and discussion by a voluntary Irish committee representing both Unionist and Nationalist opinion. It was established in 1899, and now commands the large endowment of £197,000 a year, with a capital sum of over £200,000. The annual endowment is clear of all charges for offices and staff, which are on the Civil Service Estimates. Its head is a Minister responsible to Parliament, but associated with him are Boards of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, two-thirds of which are elected respectively by County and Borough Councils. Without their concurrence no expenditure can be undertaken, and local work is largely carried on through committees appointed by these Councils. The people at large are therefore intimately and responsibly associated with the work of the Department, the annual meetings of which form a kind of industrial Parliament, where the whole economic organisation of Ireland can be reviewed, debated, and developed. The Department works by teaching, by inquiry, by experiment, and has an immense field of activity in dealing with cattle diseases, the improvement of stock, the control of creameries, the marketing of produce, etc. It has also brought facilities for technical instruction into every important centre of population.

University Education

This important question was settled in 1908 by the foundation of a new University, the "National University," with its central authority in Dublin and colleges in Dublin (the old Catholic University of which Cardinal Newman was rector), in