128 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



the formation of a Ministry of Agriculture and 

 Industries for Ireland, which should create and 

 spread through the country the agricultural 

 instruction urgently needed both by individuals 

 and associations. 



Plunkett's policy had shown once for all that 

 a combination of all the political factions in 

 Ireland is possible.* He was cried down from all 

 sides because he wished to be a practical Irish 

 patriot, without favour for any particular class or 

 religion. He had survived this opposition, and 

 had called into life a movement supported by 

 all circles in the country. He had also shown — 

 and he was the first to show — that a war of classes 

 is not necessarily the sole meaning of all politics 

 in Ireland, and that It is not, in truth, a national 

 policy at all. But he did more than this. He 

 showed that the popular policy, which demands 

 new legislation every five years in order to 

 divide up the surplus of agricultural profits 

 according to some new arrangement, is not 

 sufficient to make the country prosper. Ireland 



^ A combination of all parties had previously taken place in 

 connection with the Financial Relations question. A Royal 

 Commission had found that the indirect taxation of beer, 

 spirits, tea, and tobacco weighed more heavily on Ireland, 

 per head of the population, than on England and Scotland. 

 Thereupon there arose a short-lived but clamorous agitation 

 which demanded a repayment of the capital robbed from 

 Ireland, and which taught its adherents to believe that the 

 excessive taxation of alcohol, tobacco, and tea was the cause 

 of the economic backwardness of the country. 



