Agricultural Education in Ireland. 
425 
each 10/. per school for agricultural instruction ; and in the case 
of Loughashc, tlic largest and most important of the class, the 
gi'ant is still larger. There is surely not an intelligent person in 
the United Kingdom who can object to the insignificant outlay 
of the Board of Education for so useful an object as the diffusion 
among the Irish people of sound agricultural knowledge. 
It may be said that there is less want of this sort of knowledge 
now than there was when the Board first embarked in agricul- 
tural education. But it must be borne in mind that the agricul- 
tural practice of the vast majority of Irish small farmers is still 
deplorably deficient. Englishmen who have not been in the re- 
mote parts of Ireland find it difficult to realise the state of the 
country, or the necessity of State instruction in agriculture. In 
England, the great proprietors who reside on their estates gene- 
rally set a suitable example of farm management on their home 
farms. This is, no doubt, also the case to a certain extent in 
some parts of Ireland ; but in the backward districts the proprie- 
tors are for the most part absentees, and the national schools 
and the clergy are the only agents of civilisation. In England 
the farms are large ; but in Ireland, as I have shown, there are 
about half a million of occupiers not one of whom holds over 
thirty statute acres. About two-thirds of these belong to the 
class denominated small farmers. There are still in Ireland 
360,000 agricultural holdings, not one of which is valued for 
purposes of government taxation at more than lOZ. per year. Can 
there be any grounds whatever for doubting the utility, and, in 
fact, the necessity, of instructing the greater number of these 
persons in better modes of husbandry ? Is it not both the duty 
and the interest of the State, to use the national schools as the 
medium of conveying agricultural instruction, more especially in 
those remote districts of the South and West, which are inac- 
cessible to any other agent of agricultural progress ? 
There are thirteen national schools in the county of Donegal 
in which combined agricultural and literary instruction of the 
character now described is afforded. The agricultural element 
costs the State 5Z. per school ; can any person question the wis- 
dom of the Commissioners in encouraging this species of educa- 
tion, at so trifling a cost, in that remote and wild region ? In the 
province of Connaught there are forty national schools in which 
agricultural and literary instruction is combined in the same way. 
There are six of these schools on one estate, the rental of which 
is 28,000/. per annum, and on which there are 4500 tenants, who 
each pay on an average about 6/. of rent per year. When the 
Commissioners began to make grants for agricultural instruction, 
the rotation of crops was scarcely known amongst the small 
farmers on this vast estate. Now the knowledge of the rotation 
