The machinery of government ought never to be complicated, and ought to
be easily understood by the citizens. In Ireland, where we have at
present no thought of foreign policy, no question of army or navy,
departments of State should fall naturally into a few divisions
concerned with agriculture, education, local government, justice,
police, and taxation. The administration of some of these are matters
of national concern, and they should and must be under parliamentary
control, and that control should be jealously protected. Others are
sectional, and these should be controlled in respect of policy by
persons representative of these sections, and elected solely by them. I
think there should also be a department of Labor. I am not sure that the
main work of the Minister in charge ought not to be the organization of
labor in its proper unions or guilds. It is a work as important to the
State as the organization of agriculture, and indeed from a humanitarian
point of view more urgent. Nothing is more lamentable, nothing fills
the heart more with despair, than the multitude of isolated workers,
sweated, unable to fix a price for their work, ignorant of its true
economic value; connected with no union, unable to find any body to
fall back on for help or advice in trouble, neglected altogether by
society, which yet has to pay a heavy price in disease, charity, poor
rates, and in social disorder for its neglect.
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