The first consists of direct aid to agriculture and other rural industries, and to sea and inland fisheries.

The second consists of indirect aid given to these objects, and also to town manufactures and commerce, through education--a term which must be interpreted in its widest sense.

Needless to say, direct aids, being tangible and immediately beneficial, are the more popular: a bull, a boat, or a hand-loom is more readily appreciated than a lecture, a leaflet, or an idea.

Yet in the Department we all realise--and, what is more important, the people are coming to realise--that by far the most important work we have to do is that which belongs to the sphere of education, especially education which has a distinctly practical aim.

To this branch of the subject I shall, therefore, first direct the reader's attention.
It must be remembered that, for reasons fully set out in the earlier portions of the book, I am treating the Irish Question as being, in its most important economic and social aspects, the problem of rural life.
The Department's scheme of technical instruction, therefore, need not here be detailed in its application to the needs of our few manufacturing towns, but only in its application to agriculture and the subsidiary industries.