hat respect a living
reality of our own time, so also, but in a much graver form, are the
past depredations and ineptitudes of Unionism living realities in the
present economy of Ireland.

The ruling fallacy of the English mind on these matters consists in the
assumption that the mere repeal of an old oppression restores a people
to the _status quo ante_. In the case of Ireland the old oppressions
have not been repealed except in two or three points, but even if they
had been wholly cancelled it would be absurd to expect immediate
recovery from their effects. If you have been beating a man on the head
with a bludgeon for half an hour, and then leave off, there is no sense
in saying to him: "There, I have given over bludgeoning you. Why on
earth don't you get up, and skip about like me?" If you have been
robbing a man's till for ten years, and then decide--by the way you have
not yet decided--to leave off, there is no sense in saying to him: "Why
the devil are you always hard up? Look at me doing the same sort of
business as you on absolutely equal terms, and I'm able to keep two
motor-cars and six servants." But that is precisely what is said to us.
You are eternally expecting from Ireland new miracles of renaissance.
But although she does possess recuperative powers, hardly to be
paralleled, even she must have time to slough the corruptions of the
past. You cannot, as some Englishmen imagine, cancel six centuries
before breakfast. Your Penal Laws, for instance, have been long since
struck out of the Statute Book, but they have not yet been eliminated
from social habitudes or from certain areas of commercial life.

You began to tax Ireland beyond her capacity in 1801, and you are still
overtaxing her. In the interval you withdraw from her economic life a
tribute of not less than L325,000,000. You broke her industrial
tradition, injured her credit, depressed her confidence. You forced upon
her a fiscal system devised to suit your needs in utter contempt of
hers. To clean that slate you must first, by some measure of
restitution, clean your conscience. And when that has been done you will
have to wait for the curative effects of time to undo the Economics of
Unionism.

You suffered landlordism to devastate Ireland unchecked. The capital
that should have gone to enrich and develop the soil was squeezed out of
it in rack-rents, largely absentee. The whole agricultural economy of
the country was stricken with a sort of ar