To be the founder of agricultural co-operation in Ireland was Sir Horace Plunkett's first great achievement; the bringing together of the Recess Committee was his second. He conceived the idea of inviting a number of the most prominent men in Ireland, irrespective of religious or political differences, to join in an inquiry into the means by which the Government could best promote the development of the agricultural and industrial resources of Ireland. This idea he propounded in an open letter published in August, 1895. The proposal was a bold one—how bold no one unacquainted with Ireland will easily realise. Amongst Nationalist politicians the majority fought shy of it. Mr. Justin McCarthy, the leader of the party, could only see in Sir Horace's letter "the expression of a belief that if your policy could be successfully carried out, the Irish people would cease to desire Home Rule." "I do not feel," he added, "that I could possibly take part in any organisation which had for its object the seeking of a substitute for that which I believe to be Ireland's greatest need—Home Rule." Fortunately, then as now, the Irish party was divided into two camps, and Mr. Redmond, at the head of a small minority of "Independents," was at liberty to take a different line. "I am unwilling," he wrote, "to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation in Ireland."
Ultimately, Sir Horace Plunkett's strong personality, his manifest singleness of purpose, and the intrinsic merits of his proposal carried the day. A committee, truly representative of all that was best in Irish life, was brought together, and commissioners were despatched to the Continent to report upon those systems of State aid linked with voluntary organisation which appeared to have revolutionised agriculture in countries not otherwise more favoured than Ireland itself. A large mass of most valuable information was collected. In less than a year the committee reported. The substance of the recommendation was
"That a Department of Government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to Parliament at its head. The Central Body was to be assisted by a Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned. The Department was to be adequately endowed from the Imperial Treasury, and was to administer State aid to agriculture and industries in Ireland upon principles which were fully described."[71]
With the general policy of these recommendations the Irish Government were in hearty sympathy, and the Bill of 1897, already referred to, was a first attempt to give effect to it. But in the absence of popularly elected local authorities an important part of the machinery for carrying out the proposals was wanting.
IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT.
A reform of local government in Ireland had long been given a place in the Unionist programme, but the magnitude of the undertaking and the pressure of other business had hitherto stood in its way. It was now decided to take up this task in earnest, on the understanding that other measures relating to Ireland should be postponed in the meantime. The Irish Local Government Bill was accordingly introduced and passed in the following session (1898).
Of this Act, which involved not merely the creation of new popular Authorities, but also an entire re-arrangement of local taxation, and some important changes in the system of poor relief, I will only say here that it must be counted as another of the great remedial measures which Ireland owes to the Unionist Party, and which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to carry out in a satisfactory manner without assistance on a generous scale from the ample resources of the Imperial Exchequer.
IRISH DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION.
The way was now open for the measure to which I had looked forward from the first moment of my going to Ireland, and which was to constitute the final abandonment of the old laissez faire policy in connection with Irish agriculture and industries. Great care and labour were devoted to the framing of the new Bill, and I was in constant touch throughout with members of the Recess Committee. It contained clauses dealing with urban as well as rural industries, but these lie outside my present subject, and I shall not refer to them further here. On the side of rural development the Bill embodied a novel experiment in the art of government—novel at all events in British or Irish experience, though something like it had already been tried with conspicuous success in various countries on the Continent. It was the continental example which had inspired the Report of the Recess Committee, and it was the recommendations of the Recess Committee which in their turn suggested the main features of the Bill of 1899.
There was indeed one body in Ireland whose functions corresponded in some degree with those of the Authority it was now proposed to set up. This body was the Congested Districts Board; and it might be said with some approximation to the truth that the object we had in view was to do for the rest of Ireland, mutatis mutandis, what the Congested Districts Board was intended to do for the poverty-stricken districts of the West. But there was this very important difference. The operations of the Congested Districts Board were carried out, and necessarily carried out, on strictly "paternal" lines; the dominant note in the new departure was to be the encouragement of self-help. This difference carried with it an equally important difference in the constitution and methods of the administering Authority.