We may take one notable instance of how since the Union ignorance of Irish history has been officially fostered. In 1828 a lofty enterprise was opened by Sir Thomas Larcom, director of the central office of the newly-appointed Irish Ordnance Survey. The Survey maps were to be constructed on such a scale as to be of use in correcting the unequal pressure of taxation, and to serve as guides for local improvement. Enquiry indeed was needed into the resources and conditions of a country which Petrie describes--“the habitations of the people miserable and comfortless, and the people themselves the most wretched in the world. Joy will never brighten the prospect, misery never disappear.” To carry out these orders Larcom planned a scheme on noble lines. He held it necessary to complete the maps by making a study in each parish of the state in which Nature had placed it, the condition to which it had been brought by art, and the uses now made by the people of their combination; in other words, there must be an exact knowledge of the natural products of the country, its history and antiquities, and its economic state and social condition. In this scheme of elevated science an enquiry into past history was considered necessary as a prelude to the proper understanding of the present state--an enquiry which was to include all monuments of the past, Pagan and Christian, all the traditions and accounts of them that remained, the state of society in which they arose, the earliest history of the people whose descendants might still inhabit the district, and the changes which led to the present establishments for government.