nity, and establish in very clear
and indisputable fashion the cash nexus between Unionism and decay. The
argument is simple.

The Union came precisely in the period in which capital was beginning to
dominate the organisation of industry. The Union denuded Ireland of the
capital which would have enabled her to transform the technique of her
manufactures, and so maintain the ground won under Grattan's Parliament.
The channels through which this export of capital proceeded were
absenteeism and over-taxation.

The first statement in this paragraph of plaint calls for no
elaboration. Arnold Toynbee took as the terminal dates of the Industrial
Revolution the years 1760 and 1830. The last generation of the
eighteenth century brought to birth the great inventions, but it was the
first generation of the nineteenth that founded on them large scale
production, and settled the structure of modern industry. Not without
profound disturbance and incalculable suffering was the new system
established in England; the story may be read in the pages of Marx,
Cunningham, Cooke Taylor, or any of the economic historians. But, for
all the blood and tears, it was established. Insulated from the
continental turmoil, served by her Titanic bondsmen coal and iron,
England was able to defeat the Titan, Napoleon. Now it is idle to deny
that this period would under any government have strained Ireland, as
the phrase goes, to the pin of her collar. But the Union made her task
impossible. Lord Castlereagh was quite right in pointing to the
accumulation of capital as the characteristic advantage of England.
Through centuries of political freedom that process had gone on without
interruption. Ireland, on the contrary, had been scientifically pillaged
by the application to her of the "colonial system" from 1663 to 1779; I
deliberately exclude the previous waste of war and confiscation. She had
but twenty years of commercial freedom, and, despite her brilliant
success in that period, she had not time to accumulate capital to any
great extent. But Grattan's Parliament had shown itself extraordinarily
astute and steady of purpose in its economic policy. Had its guidance
continued--conservative taxation, adroit bounties, and that close
scrutiny and eager discussion of the movements of industry which stands
recorded in its Journal--the manufactures of Ireland would have
weathered the storm. But the luck was as usual against her. Instead of
wise leadership fr