mports and exports of
a country, so must there be a balance between the revenue raised in
a nation and the public expenditure on that nation. Irish economic
depression after the Act of Union was due in large measure to absentee
landlordism and the expenditure of Irish revenue outside Ireland with
no proportionate return. This must not be expected to continue against
Irish interests. Ireland, granted the freedom it desires, would be
willing to defend its freedom and the freedom of other dominions in the
commonwealth of nations it belonged to, but it is not willing to allow
millions to be raised in Ireland and spent outside Ireland. If three or
five millions are raised in Ireland for imperial purposes and spent
in Great Britain it simply means that the vast employment of labor
necessitated takes place outside Ireland: whereas if spent here it
would mean the employment of many thousands of men, the support of their
families, and in the economic chain would follow the support of those
who cater for them in food, clothing, housing, etc. Even with the best
will in the world, to do its share towards its defense of the freedom
it had attained, Ireland could not permit such an economic drain on its
resources. No country could approve of a policy which in its application
means the emigration of thousands of its people every year while it
continued.

23. I believe even if there were no historical basis for Irish
nationalism that such claims as I have stated would have become
inevitable, because the tendency of humanity as it develops
intellectually and spiritually is to desire more and more freedom, and
to substitute more and more an internal law for the external law or
government, and that the solidarity of empires or nations will depend
not so much upon the close texture of their political organization or
the uniformity of mind so engendered as upon the freedom allowed and the
delight people feel in that freedom. The more educated a man is the more
it is hateful to him to be constrained and the more impossible does it
become for central governments to provide by regulation for the infinite
variety of desires and cultural developments which spring up everywhere
and are in themselves laudable, and in no way endanger the State. A
recognition of this has already led to much decentralization in Great
Britain itself. And if the claim for more power in the administration of
local affairs was so strongly felt in a homogeneous country li