Agricultural Education in Ireland. 
427 
Objections have been raised, occasionally, against the system 
of having young men trained by the State to become farm 
bailiffs or agriculturists lor landed proprietors ; but such ob- 
jections have emanated from persons who were unacquainted 
with the state of Ireland. It is to be borne in mind, that the 
system of national education was founded for the benefit of the 
mass of the population, and the Commissioners believed it was 
their duty to aid and encourage every young man of talent and 
promise to advance himself, for they knew that in advancing 
himself he must benefit the State. Hundreds of intelligent, well- 
educated men, trained at the Glasnevin Agricultural Institution, 
are now centres of enlightenment in their respective districts ; 
and the Commissioners are of opinion that none of them are re- 
paying the State for the cost of agricultural instruction so 
thoroughly as those who are acting as estate agriculturists, advis- 
ing, instructing, and directing tenants of great landlords. Of 
the importance of that class of estate officials, I have already 
written fully ; and I must say that if the landed gentry of Ireland 
understood their interests, they would employ in this capacity 
every talented deserving man who had been trained at Glas- 
nevin. 
In the improved circumstances of Ireland, many of the young 
men who now seek admission to the Glasnevin Agricultural 
School are the sons of persons who are able to pay a moderate 
fee for the education of their children. Accordingly, the Com- 
missioners insist that persons of this class shall pay a lee of 
201. a year, for the agricultural training afforded to them at 
the institution. The greater number of the pupils are, how- 
ever, those who are boarded and educated wholly at the public 
expense, and who are admitted by competitive examination, as 
suggested in 1860, by the Right Hon. E. Cardwell, then Chief 
Secretary for Ireland. 
In addition to the system of agricultural instruction referred to 
in the foregoing remarks, the Commissioners are now diffusing 
agricultural knowledge in many of the rural schools, which do 
not rank as agricultural schools at all, through the medium of an 
agricultural class-book. At the outset they published a work of 
this kind, but it had got behind the enlarged requirements of 
the schools, and in 1867 they issued a new book of a more com- 
prehensive character, which has been favourably received by the 
public, and of which upwards of 50,000 copies have been already 
sold through the national schools. The Commissioners are 
anxious that this book, or such other works on agricultural in- 
dustry as they may sanction, should be read at least twice a week 
in all their schools. 
I have refrained from introducing into these remarks on the 
