38 State Aid to AgrkuUvre in Ireland. 



Want of funds brought this scheme to an end. but not until 

 some real advantages had accrued from it, such as the intro- 

 duction of green-cropping into the south and west, and even 

 the centre of Ireland. Another body, the North- West of 

 Ireland Agricultural Society, established in 1826 a school of 

 agriculture at Templemoyle, near Londonderry, the first of the 

 kind in Ireland. This school, the aim of which was to turn 

 out skilled, practical farmers, became connected with a State 

 institution, the Board of National Education, in 1850, and con- 

 tinued to work until 1866. 



A more ambitious effort to supply agricultural education to 

 Ireland was made by the latter Board. In 1838 it made agri- 

 culture a subject in the course at its training college for 

 elementary teachers, and established a model farm at Glasnevin, 

 Co. Dublin, where these teachers-in-training might see in 

 practice the principles taught in the lectures on husbandry. 

 The express purpose of the Glasnevin institution was, not to 

 produce land stewards or practical farmers, l)ut mainly to 

 qualify elementary teachers to instruct the pupils of rural 

 schools in the principles of agricultural science. Later on, 

 however, the Board attempted a system of technical instruction 

 in agj'iculture, and rented some twenty farms in various parts 

 of the country, fitted with residences and farm buildings, and 

 spending over 100,000Z. on the scheme. They also offered 

 gi-atuities to teachers in rural workhouse schools for the suc- 

 cessful management of any farms attached to the institutions, 

 and for giving sound agricultural instruction to their pupils. 

 Soon, however, economic objections were raised, and the 

 English Free Traders showed strong and persistent hostility to 

 the training of farmers and stewards at the public cost. The 

 Board felt obliged to abandon the workhouse scheme, and to 

 abate its energies in the establishing of model farms of its own ; 

 in short, its activities in this sphere became paralysed by the 

 criticism and opposition directed against it in Parliament, and 

 by the ceaseless hostility of the Treasury, 



Moreover, the enthusiasm at first evoked by the starting of 

 the scheme had altogether abated. By 1873 there was but a 

 handful of pupils resident at the twenty model farms in the 

 provinces. The Board then proceeded to get rid of nineteen 

 of these farms, and were about to drop the twentieth — the 

 Munster Institute at Cork — when a local committee, concerned 

 at the decline of the Cork butter trade, proposed that it should 

 be turned into a school of practical agriculture and a training 

 institute for dairy-maids. This scheme was carried out, and 

 the only agricultural establishments now remaining under the 

 Board of National Education were this Munster Institute and 

 the Glasnevin Model Farm. Both of these now accepted 



