tariff to clothe that skeleton with the flesh and blood of production
and exchange, and, as far as possible, to clothe it evenly. Australia,
too, is waking, though somewhat hesitatingly, to the need of
transcontinental railways, for the protection of new industries and for
the even development and filling up of all her territories. In South
Africa the economic process preceded the political. It was the dread of
the breakdown of a temporary customs union already in existence that
precipitated the discussion of union. And it was the development of the
Rand as the great internal market of South Africa, and the competitive
construction of railway lines from the coast, that really decided the
question of legislative union against federation. All three instances
lead to the same conclusion that union to be really effective and stable
needs three things: firstly, a developed system of internal
communications reducing all natural barriers to social, political, and
commercial intercourse to the very minimum; secondly, a national tariff,
protective or otherwise, sufficient at least to encourage the fullest
flow of trade along those communications rather than outside of them;
thirdly, a deliberate use of the tariff and of the national expenditure
to secure, as far as possible, the even development of every portion of
the national territory.

In the United Kingdom all these instruments for making the Union real
are still unutilised. The system of _laisser faire_ in the matter of
internal communications has allowed St. George's Channel still to remain
a real barrier. A dozen train-ferries, carrying not only the railway
traffic between Great Britain and Ireland, but enabling the true west
coast of the United Kingdom to be used for transatlantic traffic, would
obliterate that strip of sea which a British minister recently urged as
an insuperable objection to a democratic union.[61] To construct them
would not be doing as much, relatively, as little Denmark has long since
done, by the same means, to unite her sea-divided territory. The
creation of a tariff which shall assist not only manufactures, but
agriculture and rural industries, is another essential step. In view of
Ireland's undeveloped industrial condition the giving of bounties to the
establishment in Ireland of new industries, such as the silk industry,
would be a thoroughly justifiable extension of the Unionist policy
carried out through the Congested Districts Board and the