We note with regret, though without surprise, that the Irish
Council of Agriculture, by 47 votes to 33, has refused to support the application of Sir Horace Plunkett's Irish Agricultural Organization Society for a grant in aid from the Development Fund. The work that Sir Horace Plunkett has done for Ireland in the last twenty years needs no eulogy from us. The present economic prosperity of the country, which even Nationalist politicians admit, owed more to him than to any man living. But the very success of his efforts in concentrating all parties and creeds on the work of industrial development has exposed him to the unrelenting hostility of the Irish Parliamentary party and of Mr. T. W. Russell, who succeeded him as Vice-President of the Irish Department of Agriculture. The story of Sir Horace Plun- kett's removal from that post is perhaps the blackest page in the record of the present Administration, and its sequel shows that Mr. Russell's animosity is still unappeased. Not content with severing the partnership between his department and the I.A.O.S. and cutting off the annual grant on the grotesque charge of political partisanship, he has now crowned his disservice to Ireland by inducing the Irish Council of Agriculture, of which he is es officio chairman , to refuse an application for a subsidy which has been made, with the approval of the Board of Agriculture, to the English and Scottish Societies, offshoots of Sir Horace Plunkett's Association.
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