wark of national safety, an instalment of Imperial consolidation, and
a protection to the freedom of minorities in Ireland, even if it could
be shown that agriculture, the chief industry of Ireland, had little to
gain under the Union and nothing to lose under Home Rule. Fortunately,
this cannot be alleged except by those who shut their eyes to the
results of State-aided Land Purchase in Ireland, and refuse to consider
the consequences of tampering with the mainspring of that beneficent
operation: I mean the credit of a joint exchequer under one Parliament
for both countries. "England's Case against Home Rule" coincides with
Ireland's need for retaining the prosperity that has come to her, after
long waiting, under, and because of, the Union. It is, therefore,
fitting that a place should be found in this book for a brief account of
what Irish agriculture may hope from the Union and must fear from Home
Rule.

The history of Irish Agriculture until recent years differed from the
history of English Agriculture at many points, and always to the marked
disadvantage of Ireland. Dynastic and religious controversies which--if
we except the suppression of monasteries and the exile of a few
Jacobites--left English countrysides untouched, in Ireland carried with
them the confiscation of vast territories and the desolating Influence
of Penal Laws. Changes in economic theory contributed even more sharply
to the decay of Irish enterprise. When England favoured Protection Irish
industry was handicapped out of manufactures. When England adopted Free
Trade Irish agriculture, on which the hopes of Ireland had perforce been
fixed, suffered in a greater degree. The doctrine of _laisser faire_
wrought little but wrong when applied by absentee buyers of bankrupt
estates to tracts hardly susceptible of development by capital, amid a
peasantry wedded to continuity of tenure, and justified in that
tradition by the fact that they and their forbears had executed nearly
all the improvements on their holdings. Most of the nation were
restricted to agriculture under conditions that spelt failure, and
imposed exile as the penalty for failure, since other avenues to
competence were closed. The climax of misfortune was reached a
generation after the triumph of Free Trade. Ireland, being almost wholly
an agricultural country, suffered as a whole, whereas England, an
industrial country, suffered only in districts, from the collapse of
agricultural prices