cated, found
the Irish people fettered by an industrial past for which they
themselves were not chiefly responsible. They needed exceptional
treatment of a kind which was not conceded. They were, instead, still
further handicapped, towards the middle of the century, by the adoption
of Free Trade, which was imposed upon them when they were not only
unable to take advantage of its benefits, but were so situated as to
suffer to the utmost from its inconveniences.

I am convinced that the long-continued misunderstanding of the
conditions and needs of this country, the withholding, for so long, of
necessary concessions, was due not to heartlessness or contempt so much
as to a lack of imagination, a defect for which the English cannot be
blamed. They had, to use a modern term, 'standardised' their qualities,
and it was impossible to get out of their minds the belief that a
divergence, in another race, from their standard of character was
synonymous with inferiority. This attitude is not yet a thing of the
past, but it is fast disappearing; and thoughtful Englishmen now
recognise the righteousness of the claim for reparation, and are willing
liberally to apply any stimulus to our industrial life which may place
us, so far as this is possible, on the level we might have occupied had
we been left to work out our own economic salvation. Unfortunately, all
Englishmen are not thoughtful, and hence I emphasise the fact that
England is largely responsible for our industrial defects, and must not
hesitate to face the financial results of that responsibility.

When we pass from the domain of commerce, where we have seen that
circumstances reduced to the minimum Ireland's participation in the
industrial supremacy of England, and come to examine the historical
development of Irish agrarian life, we find a situation closely related
to, and indeed, largely created by, that which we have been discussing.
'Debarred from every other trade and industry,' wrote the late Lord
Dufferin, 'the entire nation flung itself back upon the land, with as
fatal an impulse as when a river, whose current is suddenly impeded,
rolls back and drowns the valley which it once fertilised.' The
energies, the hopes, nay, the very existence of the race, became thus
intimately bound up with agriculture. This industry, their last resort
and sole dependence, had to be conducted by a people who in every other
avocation had been unfitted for material success. And this in