ional
territory and resources, the removal of natural internal barriers is
often even more important than the setting up of artificial external
barriers. Statesmen who have had to face the task of giving strength and
solidity to weak political unions have always aimed at the development
of internal communications. Washington's first concern after the success
of the American War of Independence was to endeavour to create a system
of internal river and canal navigation in order to help to bind the
loosely allied States into a real union. Bismarck used the Prussian
railways as well as the Zollverein to build up German unity. In the
making of Canada the Intercolonial railway and the Canadian Pacific were
essential complements to the national tariff. Railways forced South
Africa into union, and will gradually give Australia real cohesion and
unity. In the United Kingdom there has been no national policy with
regard to communications, least of all any nationally directed or
stimulated effort to cement the political union of 1800. But such a
policy is essential to the reality of the Union. To get rid, as far as
possible, of the barrier which the St. George's Channel presents to-day
both to the convenience of passenger traffic and to the direct through
carriage of goods between internal points in the two islands should be
one of the first objects of Unionist policy in the future. In the
train-ferry, which has bridged the channels of sea-divided Denmark,
which in spite of the Baltic, has made Sweden contiguous with Germany,
which for the purposes of railway traffic, has practically abolished
Lake Michigan, modern developments have provided us with the very
instrument required. To Irish agriculture the gain of being put into
direct railway communication with all England and Scotland would be
immense. From the tourist and sporting point of view Ireland would reap
a doubled and trebled harvest. More than that, the bridging of St.
George's Channel will for the first time enable the west coast of
Ireland to become what it ought to be, the true west coast of the United
Kingdom, the starting point of all our fast mail and passenger services
across the Atlantic.

But all this implies the Union, the existence of a single Government
interested in the development of the United Kingdom as a whole. Separate
governments in Great Britain and Ireland would not have the same
inducement to give financial encouragement to such schemes. Irish
manu