ment nor the industrial habits of the Irish. They
tell us that with the industrial revolution the juxtaposition of coal
and iron became an all-important factor in the problem, and they recall
how the north and west of England captured the industrial supremacy from
the south and east. Incidentally they point out that the people of the
English counties which suffered by these economic causes braced
themselves to meet the changes, and it is suggested that if the people
of Ireland had shown the same resourcefulness, they, too, might have
weathered the storm. And, finally, we are reminded that England, by her
stupid Irish policy, punished her own supporters, and even herself,
quite as much as the 'mere Irish.'

Much of this may be true, but this line of argument only shows that
these English economists do not thoroughly understand the real grievance
which the Irish people still harbour against the English for past
misgovernment. The commercial restraints sapped the industrial instinct
of the people--an evil which was intensified in the case of the
Catholics by the working of the penal laws. When these legislative
restrictions upon industry had been removed, the Irish, not being
trained in industrial habits, were unable to adapt themselves to the
altered conditions produced by the Industrial Revolution, as did the
people in England. And as for commerce, the restrictions, which had as
little moral sanction as the penal laws, and which invested smuggling
with a halo of patriotism, had prevented the development of commercial
morality, without which there can be no commercial success. It is not,
therefore, the destruction of specific industries, or even the sweeping
of our commerce from the seas, about which most complaint is now made.
The real grievance lies in the fact that something had been taken from
our industrial character which could not be remedied by the mere removal
of the restrictions. Not only had the tree been stripped, but the roots
had been destroyed. If ever there was a case where President Kruger's
'moral and intellectual damages' might fairly be claimed by an injured
nation, it is to be found in the industrial and commercial history of
Ireland during the period of the building up of England's commercial
supremacy.

The English mind quite failed, until the very end of the nineteenth
century, to grasp the real needs of the situation which had thus been
created in Ireland The industrial revolution, as I have indi