measure against cattle disease, has in effect protected
one most important branch of Irish agriculture and given it a vital
interest in the maintenance of the Union. On the eve of the revival of a
national policy of economic development Ireland stands on a far sounder
basis, and in a far better position to take advantage of that
development, than in 1800. The standard of life is rising, and will of
itself put a check on a mere multiplication of beings living on the
margin of subsistence. For the natural increase of population, which
will once more come about, there will be provision not only through more
intensive cultivation and in rural industries, but also in a real,
though possibly gradual, development of new manufacturing industries.
Incidentally the establishment of a protective tariff for the United
Kingdom will, by lowering the excessive duties on tea and tobacco which
weigh so heavily upon Ireland, increase still further the local excess
of Government expenditure over revenue and facilitate the local
accumulation of capital, already so noticeable a feature of recent
years, and thus provide an essential factor in stimulating new
enterprise, whether agricultural or industrial. Nor would it be in any
way inconsistent with a national economic policy for the United Kingdom
as a whole to devote special sums, through bounties and in other ways,
towards the opening up of new fields for the economic activities of the
Irish people. For the first time in her history Ireland will have a fair
start, and, under the Union, the twentieth century may yet prove
Ireland's century just as Canadians claim that it will prove Canada's
century.

Now let us turn to the other side of the picture. The establishment of
Home Rule, in other words of political separatism, must inevitably be
followed by active economic separatism, _i.e._ by the creation of a
completely separate fiscal system in Ireland. The idea that an Irish
Chancellor of the Exchequer can carry on in dependence on a British
Budget, which may at any moment upset all his calculations of revenue,
is absurd. So is the idea that there can be separate tariffs with mutual
Free Trade, or a common tariff without a common government to frame it.
If Free Trade, indeed, were to be maintained in England, fiscal
separation would be no disadvantage to Ireland. On the contrary, she
would continue to enjoy the same access to the British market while
giving her own industries such protection