• The Historic Case for Irish Independence (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1918) - as attached; also available as .doc & .pdf.
• The Economic Case for Irish Independence (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1920) - [current page] also available as .doc & pdf].

POETRY. A Vision of Life (1909)- The Crucibles of Time (1911)
DRAMA. Queen Tara: A Tragedy (1913) - The Mount of Transfiguration (1915) - Teigue: A Play in One Act (1915).
NOVELS. Broken Arcs (1911) - Jacob Elthorne (1914) - Children of Earth (1918).
LITERARY STUDIES. Shakespeare: A Study (1911) - Studies and Appreciations (1912) - AE: A Study of a Man and a Nation (191 6) - Byeways of Study (1918).
GENERAL. The Gaelic State in the Past and Future (1917). The Historic Case for Irish Independence (1918) - The Freedom of the Seas (1918) - A Chronicle of Jails (1917) - A Second Chronicle of Jails (1919).

NOTE

Several causes have delayed the issue of this little book. First a Censor’s hand interposed that not unreasonably detected no great love to its master. Then when he at length removed his interdiction, the stress of other things to do gave me little leisure to bring to date certain figures that had fallen behind time. In passing it now for publication it is only necessary for me to say that for all figures outside Ireland or England I have relied on the latest issue of The Statesman’s Year Book. For Ireland or England I have bravely relied on English official Returns; not that I suggest that any unnecessary reliance need be placed on those Returns, for many before me have complained of the arbitrary procedure of the calculation adopted in them in matters as between Ireland and England; but rather because no other figures are available, and it is certain that any argument by an Irishman based on those Returns is committed in advance to moderation. The Irish case can amply afford the moderation so wisely insisted on by imperial reckoners. I have sought to avoid reference to legislation or administration where it might be retorted that these were conditioned by the European War. Strictly that reference is of the essence of the argument,

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inasmuch as neither legislation or administration was decreed by Irish authority or derived from Irish needs. When, for example, the English Food Controller after the war decreed prices for the sale of cheese, and in each case decreed a higher price for cheese manufactured in England than for the same cheese manufactured in Ireland; when, again after the war, with a starving Europe stirring a world’s pity, it was decreed that Ireland, a food-producing country, should not be permitted to ship foodstuffs to the Continent unless they first passed through England, for the supply of England at cheap prices and for the profit on the surplus by English merchants; when Irish raw materials were bought by the English Government at controlled prices, and sold to English manufacturers — then, it is clear, we are dealing with a state of affairs in which war was only an excuse for national avarice and imperial depredation. These things are, however, a subject for separate study. They are the advantages gained under unusual conditions by a refined system of servitude that made them possible. I have relied rather on a broader argument that permits of no facile retort, and have denied myself the plenteous illustration from recent years, save in the financial argument where such illustration is necessary in any estimate of the present financial credit of Ireland under the provisions of the enforced Act of Union.

Similarly I have hardly referred to war-works, though they, too, are essential. When England wanted copper for the making of shells; when she wanted coal for her furnaces of destruction — she bored

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in Irish earth for their discovery. On the signing of Armistice, in the Autumn of 1918, all these works were at once stopped. They were only rendered imperative, dangerous though they were, by her own greater dangers on European fields. Rightly or wrongly I have judged that the argument of this little book would not be strengthened by these incidents of alarm, proper though they are to that argument. For that argument does not depend on alarm, but on calculated policy — which such illustrations may reveal, but which is independent of them.

The Tables on pages 2-6 had already been compiled by my friend, Arthur Griffith, T.D., and I desire to thank him for permission to print them as they were published in Nationality. For the historical framework of this economic argument, I may, perhaps, be permitted to refer to my “Historic Case for Irish Independence” (1918).

D. F. January 25th, 1920.

THE ECONOMIC CASE

I. — Comparison of Ireland with other Nations once Subject.

Among nations that have suffered at the despotic will of other nations there is no parallel to the case of Ireland. Other nations have been cruelly oppressed. Other nations have seen their political existence partly or wholly destroyed. Other nations have been the sport of tyranny or the care of selfish greed. But of no nation in Europe is it true, as it is true of Ireland, that it has been, and is now, oppressed with a view to its extinction as an economic factor in the world. It would be necessary to turn to the fantastic practices of barbarity to find a parallel for the studied enmity of which Ireland has for centuries been the victim. Yet, in the case of Ireland, the practice has in no sense been fantastic.

Among European nations the wrongs suffered by Poland and Finland have long been causes of scandal among nations. More lately the case of Bohemia has risen for attention before the judgment of men. Each of these nations has been led captive by the chariots of empire, and each has, in its degree, been stricken by the leash of imperial rule. Yet, though their suffering is beyond defence, and has

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long come before the conscience of peoples, it is necessary to say that the measure with which they have been stricken has been a little thing compared with the leash that still strikes Ireland. Whatever bonds and penalties have been placed upon them, each of them has at least been permitted to live. Of none of them can it be said that its extermination has been sought; or, if it has been sought, that it has been efficiently achieved. Taken by the human test of population the comparison between each of them and Ireland gives results that are even startling, as will appear from a study of the following tables: —

I.— Russian Poland and Ireland.

Tabular Statement showing the Populations of Russian Poland and Ireland in certain years from 1871 to 1915.

 (a) This Table shows that while the population of Russian Poland, under Czarism, doubled in the period 1871-1915 (44 years), the population of Ireland, under British rule, decreased one-fifth. (b) Had the population of Ireland increased during this Eeriod at the same rate as that of Russian Poland, it would ave stood in 1915 at 10,675,000, instead of 4,337,000.

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It would appear that, had the Russians been the oppressors of Ireland during the past forty years, there would be six millions more Irish alive than there now are.

That fraction of the Polish people which passed under the rule of Prussia multiplied less rapidly than their compatriots who fell to the government of the Czar. Study the following: —

 II. — Prussian Poland and Ireland.

Tabuular Statement showing the Populations of Prussian Poland and Ireland in certain years from 1855 to 1910.

 (a) This Table shows that while the population of Prussian Poland, under Prussianism, increased by one-half in the period 1855-1910 (55 years), the population of Ireland, under British fule, decreased more than one-fourth.

(b) Had the population of Ireland increased during thi3 period at the same rate as that of Prussian Poland, it would have stood in 1910 at 9,070,000, instead of 4,385,000.

Whatever Prussianism may be, the Poles increased in numbers under its sway.

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The Poles who fell under Austrian rule were less oppressed than any of their brothers. The Austrians permitted them local autonomy, and materially they prospered. Study the subjoined table: —

III. — Austrian Poland and Ireland.
Tabular Statement showing the Populations of Austrian Poland and Ireland in certain years from 1846 to 1913.

 (a) This Table shows that while the population of Austrian Poland, under the Hapsburgs, increased by over five-sixths in the period 1846-1913 (67 years), the population of Ireland, under British rule, decreased almost one-half. (b) Had the population of Ireland increased during this period at the same rate as that of Austrian Poland, it would have stood in 1913 at 15,255,000, instead of 4,379,000.

Had the Austrian Poles experienced the type of oppression reserved for Ireland there would be but 2,300,000 of them left to-day.

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Now that Poland is again free, the European peoples may consider how many Poles would be left on earth if they had been subject to the system of government in Ireland. Next to Poland, the greatest enthusiasm has been shown for the liberation of Bohemia, which, according to the English Press, suffered under an outrageous foreign tyranny. Bohemia again an independent nation should be a gain to the world. Its people are brave and gifted. Bohemia, like Galicia, enjoyed local autonomy under the Austrian rule. It also was permitted more members in the Imperial Parliament than Austria itself. Study the following table:—

IV. — Bohemia and Ireland.

Tabular Statement showing the Populations of Bohemia and Ireland in certain years from 1831 to 1913.

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Had the population of Ireland from 1831 to 1913 increased at the same rate as that of Bohemia, Ireland’s population in 1913 would have stood at 13)663,000, instead of 4,379,076.

Had Ireland been peopled by Bohemians there would be but 2,200,000 of the Bohemian people left to interest Europe to-day. Finland, which has been also freed, possessed under Russia a Home Government. Study the following table: —

V. — Finland and Ireland.

Tabular Statement showing the Populations of Finland and Ireland in certain years from 1850 to 1914.

Had the population of Ireland from 1850 to 1914 increased at the same rate as that of Finland, Ireland’s

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population in 1914 would have stood at 13,738,000, instead of 4,381,398.

Had the Finns been the inhabitants of Ireland there would be but three-quarters of a million of them left.

It will be seen that Ireland was not so fortunate as to have suffered under either the Russian, German, or Austrian imperial rulers. Each of the three nations whose rise to independence has caused them to be taken as examples was thrown under the military rule of alien governments. Nor did the fact that some of them were granted representation, and considerable representation, in these foreign parliaments change the essential character of that rule. Yet in the vital issue of population, and a people’s right to live in the land of their birth, these nations, whatever injuries alien rule may have inflicted upon them, have thriven, where Ireland has perished and withered away. At the height of artificial famine, when the thoughts of men were shocked at the spectacle of millions starving in an Ireland full of plentiful crops and an abundance of food, the London Times exclaimed in triumph: “The Celts are gone — gone with a vengeance. The Lord be praised.” This gleeful utterance was foolish; for it laid bare, with a hand of almost official authority at that time, the policy that is the clue to alien rule in Ireland. [1]

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For, as a great Irishman once acutely said, what Ireland suffers under is, not her misgovernment, but her government. Neither chance nor hazard, neither blunder nor misconception, is responsible for the results under which Ireland is being, and has been, systematically destroyed. They are the end of a purposeful policy, that has seldom faltered in its practice. The methods have varied; but the results never. One of England’s political parties sought them with a chain of iron; the other with a silken cord; but the end has ever been the same. For, beyond the hatreds with which oppressors hate their oppressed, this policy has been rooted in an economic fear. The comparison of the trade and industrial output of such nations as Poland, Bohemia and Finland with the industrial output of Ireland cannot so clearly be displayed as their effect on population. The statistics of empire do not recognise the separate entities of subject nations in such a form as to make their activities exactly comparable. Yet the public facts are enough. Each of the chief cities in that part of Poland that lately lay under the Russian authority has thriven. The wares of Warsaw and Lodz, to mention two only of its industrial centres, have not only supplied the world, but have been assured of eager markets throughout the vast population of Russia. It has been computed that the output of its factories has risen from 5J millions in 1875 to 53 millions, reckoned in pounds sterling, in 1905. The minerals and mines of Southern Poland have been

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thoroughly worked. With whatever terrors the Czars have visited the Polish people cherishing their great national memories, their industries and the natural wealth of their country were, at least, cared for, and have been fully worked, with the result that, reckoned in terms of material wealth, they have prospered as a people.

The same is true of Bohemia. Prague was not only the second largest city in the late Austrian empire, but possessed an intellectual and industrial life esteemed highly throughout that empire, and was cared for by the imperial government not less than any other city. In this the capital was no exception to the other parts of Bohemia. Indeed, it is a commonplace that Bohemia was industrially one of the most prosperous parts of the empire, and was so regarded by its government. Whereas the separate trade figures of Finland are enough to reveal its industrial vitality. Whatever injuries she received as a nation those injuries were never intended to lay her economically in ruins; and it has never been suggested, by the severest judges of Czarism, that it ever sought such ruin as a principle of government.

Ruin, however, has ever been, in one form or another, the principle of government in Ireland. By comparison with these nations Ireland is, as to industrial life, like a desert among forests, though a desert artificially created by organised effort. During the whole course of her history, since the invader first stepped within her territory, first with sword and fire, then with legislative edict, and finally by administrative

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refinement (each instrument being appropriate to its hour), his presence has intended her destruction. Whereas Russia, Germany and Austria have looked upon their subject nations as economic parts of themselves, to be fostered and upbuilt, England has always regarded Ireland as an economic outlander to be stifled and strangled lest it prove a rival; and as this has involved the evacuation of population, she has undertaken this by every means, the mildest of them being local grants in aid of emigration. Not always has she looked her acts straight in the face. She has appointed parliamentary committees to enquire into the evils her administration caused, lest the right hand should see what the left hand did. But to the law of her government she has ever been faithful, first and last, parliamentary enquiries notwithstanding. And the result is that Ireland, alone among subject nations, has not only been oppressed, but blighted and ruined.

For the truth is that Ireland is indeed an economic outlander, requiring the separate development of her life. Lately England has sought to instil the thought into Irishmen that their true destiny is as an agricultural people. The reason for this is that she herself has developed so rapidly in industry to the neglect of her agriculture, and has furthermore been controlled in such great measure by landed interests who fear the breaking up of their estates, that her island now proves vulnerable for lack of food supplies. Hence her government have thought to make Ireland a larder for herself. Inhibited from

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finding her own destiny she was to subserve her master’s destiny. Yet even this convenient policy was subject to two restrictions. Directly any development of agriculture threatened to enter into rivalry with an English interest it was, as will be seen, at once stifled. Chiefly, however, the agricultural development decreed for Ireland was to be conducted not in her own interest but exclusively for England. Its products were not to be offered at the highest prices obtainable in the markets of the world, but only in English markets at the best prices to be obtained there. The whole power of administration, not omitting the training of the mind in schools, was bent to this end; but it was not trusted as sufficient in itself. If any Irish company developed a shipping line that might peradventure discover a tendency to carry Irish products to foreign ports, it was at once bought out by an English company. Though the purchase price seemed excessive at the time it proved profitable in the end. And when such products found their way to foreign ports in English ships, those ships were hindered from calling at Irish ports.

The result of this was two-fold. England could purchase Irish agricultural products at her own prices at times when other nations offered higher rates. In time of war she even, by Order in Royal Council, exacted agricultural products from Ireland, in some cases at merely nominal rates, and always at rates considerably less than she paid for the same commodities elsewhere. Thus she excluded Ireland from the world’s markets, but she did more. She thereby controlled a market of monopoly for her own

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 industrial products, to the virtual exclusion of other countries. With all the forms and shows of freedom, such was the result intended and achieved. Its success can be seen nakedly enough in the following table: — Table showing the value of Trade between certain Countries and England, together with the populations of these countries, for the last year before the opening of War, 1914.

A few years previously England’s trade with Ireland was even greater than her trade with the United States, with their 92,000,000 of population. Yet on these figures it is seen that England’s trade with Ireland, with her 4 millions of population, was greater than her combined trade with Germany and France, with their combined population of 104 millions, and equalled her combined trade with Portugal, Austro-Hungary, Japan, Spain, Italy, Bel-

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gium and Russia, with their combined populations of 294 millions. It would not be true to say that this colossal irony, traversing all true economic experience, was despite Ireland’s poverty and ruin. It would be exactly true to say that Ireland, because of the ruin to which design had brought her, became one of England’s richest possessions.

Had Ireland possessed an independent government it would have been the business of that government to undo this ruin, to break the economic vassaldom and to find for the nation the natural and separate development of its life in the world’s commerce. Even with such a government the task would require no mean effort, to so subservient a state has she been reduced. Without the organised effort government alone can give, she exists not for her own advantage, nor for the advantage of nations, but for the sole and individual advantage of England.

Yet it is not only in the ways of trade that England gathers riches from Ireland. Her resources are more various. For to none but herself is she responsible for the taxes she imposes on Ireland, or the methods she chooses to dispense that taxation. Both the amount imposed and the manner of its spending have been decreed in the interests of empire, and it is thus truly not a taxation, caused by the services a nation renders to itself, but a tribute imposed by an imperial government on a nation reduced by war. As is usual in such arrangements, the greater part of the moneys expended within the country are absorbed by the

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forces that hold it in subjection; and these moneys the people are themselves compelled to pay. The balance is retained to relieve the true course of taxation among the conquerors. It has ever been so in the rule of might; only it has never before reached the figures charged upon Ireland.

At the moment it is only necessary to perceive two aspects of this charge. During its course many bitter complaints have been made, and the usual Commissions or Royal Commissions of Enquiry have been appointed from time to time. None of their reports was ever heeded, for the recognised function of such enquiries was narcotic, not healing. One of them, however, was appointed with so great a weight of authority, and came to some conclusions so remarkable, that its report in 1896 has been the source of much subsequent reference. In short, it decided that the disparity between the conditions prevailing in England and in Ireland was such that the same level of taxation in both countries proved very unequal in its effects on each; that the financial theory of the Act of Union was an absurdity; and that during the century Ireland had been overtaxed, the excess of taxation amounting to not less than an average three million pounds sterling for each year of the century. That is to say, to 19 14 it has amounted to between £350,000,000 and £400,000,000. Since 19 14, as will be seen, not less than another £60,000,000 to £70,000,000 has been added to this total; and it is very probable that the truer addition,

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which is for certain reasons strictly inestimable, would prove to be at least not less than £ 150,000,000. This means that — on the findings of a Royal Commission appointed by the English Parliament, and under an Act of Union forced upon Ireland the financial provisions of which were judged to be absurd and inequitable — the clear profit in taxation to England now amounts to a minimum of some £500,000,000. As, by the ratio given by the same authority, Ireland’s share in the present national debt of a Union to which her people have never consented, cannot (on the least favourable of the ratios it gave) be more than £3o0,000,000, the balance due to Ireland among the nations, in any liquidation of the same instrument of union, cannot be less than;)C200,000,000.

The first consideration, as among nations, is that, in strict terms of finance, and admitting a responsibility from Ireland for a share of the debt incurred in the name of an enforced Union, there is an uncollected debt owing to Ireland of not less than £2o0,000,000 sterling. The second consideration is that, not only is Ireland, as compared with other nations recently subject, being extirpated where they have thriven in population, laid industrially in ruin where their industries have been fostered, and restricted as to agriculture where their agriculture has developed without such restrictions, but that, as compared with all nations of her degree, were they lately free or bond, she is weighted under an unendurable taxation to the sole and individual advantage of England. What

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that comparison is will be seen in the following table: —

Table showing the Populations of certain Countries as compared with their Taxation.

The above figures have been calculated from the latest figures given in The Statesman’s Year Book for 1919, Excess profits taxation have been eliminated where these are given separately, as these are not separately available for Ireland.

To maintain a position of such manifold advantage, therefore, the whole strength of England is employed. It follows as a natural consequence that as the situation rests on force and not on right there is no law in Ireland but the law of the military court, open or barely disguised. Though Ireland is, for the eye of the world, presumed to be under the same law as England, yet this is not the case, and never has been the case. In England Law is protected by a number of safeguards lest it be used for vengeful or arbitrary ends. In Ireland for only 15 of the 120 years since 1800 have those safeguards been even

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remotely applicable. Appointments to the highest judicial places have been, and are now, always grounded in the political purpose they are intended to serve. What is accounted good citizenship in all other nations is in Ireland accounted felony. The virtues and self-sacrifice that other nations delight to honour, in Ireland receive the prison-cell or the firing-party at dawn. Though Ireland is, by the constant testimony of even her political justices, conspicuously free from crime, in the sense that other nations conceive of crime, she is compelled to bear a large police, armed and equipped as a semi-military force, and her streets and public places are under the constant watch of a powerful secret service. Behind these stands the army, always kept in large numbers in the country.

The public forms of law are, indeed, often observed; but, in fact, there is no law. Ireland lives, and has always lived, in a state of constant warfare, barely disguised. Other nations at least expect, in the public courts of their countries, the discovery of law. Irishmen know that for them such an expectation is ridiculous. It is ridiculous because all the economic advantages that England reaps in Ireland are based on contempt for law and reliance on might. How those economic advantages are pursued will be seen in subsequent chapters dealing in turn with: Population, Industry and Trade, Agriculture, Natural Resources, Finance, and Civil Liberty.

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II. — Population.

In 1893 the Registrar-General for Ireland wrote: “A people which, rightly or wrongly, has been considered to be one of the most prolific, is found to be one of the most rapidly diminishing in the world, so far at least as regards the number of those who continue to reside within the boundaries of its ancestral limits. It is very probable, and, indeed, pretty certain that the Irish element in the population of the world has increased in a proportion equal to that of any other ethnical element, and probably exceeded many; but that increase has not taken place within the boundaries of Ireland.” It is to be described, he says, as a “remarkable movement of population — a movement which I believe has no parallel in modern times.”

In order that the significance of this movement of population may be seen it is necessary that certain earlier facts should be briefly passed in review. The wars of attempted conquest did not conclude till the closing decade of the seventeenth century. In truth, they did not conclude; they died away in a scene of exhaustion and desolation. Each of these wars was marked by furious attempts to exterminate the people of Ireland, both by direct slaughter and by the widespread destruction of harvests. At the end of that time a people, still proud and lately prosperous, lived

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in an unimaginable squalor on a land blackened by fire in a state of servitude that conceded them not one single right as human beings.

Nevertheless, they increased. Of these invading warriors the most successful exterminator was Cromwell. Under his hand or sign it has been computed that over 600,000 men, women and children were butchered; and that when the sword had done its work in 1653 there were living in Ireland some 850,000 survivors. In spite of the later war that opened the last decade of the century, these had increased to a population of over a million by the opening of the eighteenth century, in the computation of the uncertain figures of that time.

During the eighteenth century many left the country rather than share its dishonour. The rest were helots. They could but gather wild herbs for food, while the crops they raised paid their right to gather even herbs. They were continuously ravaged by famine.”  We scarce have a bad season,” wrote a contemporary witness, “that is not followed by a famine among the common people, which never fails to drive a multitude of our best hands out of the kingdom to seek their bread in foreign climes.” Archbishop Boulter wrote in 1727: “Last year the dearness of corn was such that thousands of families quitted their habitations to seek bread elsewhere, and many hundreds perished; this year the poor had consumed their potatoes, which is their winter subsistence, near two months sooner than ordinary, and are already, through the dearness of corn, in that want, that in some places they begin

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 already to quit their habitations.”Another witness states that during two years, 1 740-1 741, as many died of famine and its ravages as died by the sword in 1641. “Whole parishes were almost desolate, the dead were eaten in the fields by dogs, one thousand had perished in a single barony.”Famine was, indeed, their ordinary lot, and want their daily bread. Many thronged the cities to ask an alms of their jailers. Yet the following table,* compiled from several contemporary sources, and bearing on its face signs of insecurity in detail, is yet sufficient to point the steady rate in increase of population throughout that century of nightmare; —

Table skewing the Increase of Population in Ireland during the 18th century

The closing years of the century were years of legislative independence, when, in spite of the fact

1. I have taken this table from George O’Brien’s excellent “Economic History of Ireland during the Eighteenth Century.”

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 that the parliament represented only the vested interests of national conquest, many beneficial measures were passed, mainly in regard to agriculture, but dealing with industries also, that brought a prosperity in which even the outcast nation shared. In the quickening of national interest that nation gained at least the security it had hitherto lacked. The years of that independence were few, lasting only from 1783 to 1800, but their effect can at once be seen in the figures of population, whatever allowances be made for their insecurity of computation.

Whatever the Garrison Parliament did or did not achieve, by the mere fact of its existence it at least annulled the policy of national extinction as directed in the economic interest of England. It brought into being, however faultily, the thought of a separate economic policy for Ireland, and it was prepared to press that separate policy according to its own demands and requirements in open competition with England. Therefore it was expunged, and the older craving for extermination began once more to formulate itself, only now with subtler methods and with new terrors in its grasp.

 For, where the seventeenth century had looked to the sword, and where the earlier part of the eighteenth century had turned to the open prohibitions and instruments of an alien parliament, the nineteenth century, while not at once discarding the publicity of those instruments, relied rather on the administrative machinery which it busied itself to create, and with which it could more secretly work its will. Its grasp spread through the country to stifle competition

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 wherever that might arise. Moreover, the Jailer Ascendancy, whose minds during the years of legislative independence had been quickened to the thought of a separate economic need, had now in great part removed to London, from which place it sent demands for greater revenues from its estates. As a consequence, while industries in towns and cities were slowly stifled, the whole land of Ireland was racked for rents. So famine and pestilence broke with new horrors over the land, each visitation being, in the formal course of events, severer than the last. Evil upcalled evil. Landlords created destitution, and then, fearing a pauper population in its care, began to clear their estates and consolidate their farms. The English administration, having made the instinct for suppression and extinction the first law of its mind, stifled all hope of rivalry, and the English Parliament, faced by its own acts in human misery, appointed Select Committees of Enquiry. A series of such committees were appointed, who spoke of “misery and suffering which no language can possibly describe”; but nothing was done. Nothing could be done.

The evil was in the fact of conquest, and could not be removed but by the removal of that fact. The law of evil created by the relations of evil between two distinct peoples could only be broken by the sundering of those relations. So famine swept after famine across the land, taking its toll at each visitation, till in 1845, following upon the failure of the potato crop of the previous year, and in the years immediately following, it came with a force that broke the weakened will of the nation.

23 Between 1846 and 1851 a million and a half perished from starvation and its accompanying pestilence. Another half a million, however, fled a country stricken indeed, but stricken by a relentless policy, relentlessly pursued, not by any mischance. It was pursued even in the camp of death. For where she gave no moneys in relief of need, or only gave with restrictions that made the giving of no avail, England gave grants freely in aid of those who wished to leave Ireland.

So began an emigration that continued to drain the nation of the best and richest of its blood. When Irishmen arose with shotguns and in resolute combinations to win their ancient land back to their possession, some of the conditions became relieved that had made Ireland impossible for a thriving population. This was not for some time, and the conditions that England had created, inspired by her economic fear, continued, and have to this hour continued, making it impossible for Ireland, rich though she be in natural resources, to maintain the population she can bring forth on her soil.

Moreover, another element was added to the evil. Even the population that remained was not able to maintain itself on its own toil. It required the toil of the citizens of the United States to make Ireland a solvent member of the Empire into which she had by might of arms been forced. For it is no small part of a bitter irony that a considerable part of the cost of the instruments of enforcement should henceforward be paid by citizens of a free State who had been driven abroad by those very instruments.

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The following table shows the remittances sent from those who fled to those who remained, with the nett receipts of revenue raised in Ireland by England for the same years: —

Table showing Remittances from Emigrants in America to their friends in Ireland, and Nett Receipts of Revenue from Ireland for the same years.

Thus the United States helped, with whatever little goodwill, to maintain the “system which is founded on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers encamped permanently as in a hostile country,” by which alone England maintains her place in Ireland. And if the indiscretion that permitted these figures to be revealed had continued to the present time, the price oi that contribution would be seen to have swollen to a considerable total.

In the meantime, however, the “movement of population “ continued. “A people which, rightly or wrongly, has been considered to be one of the

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most prolific, is” henceforward “found to be one of the most rapidly diminishing in the world, so far at least as regards the number of those who continue to reside within the boundaries of its ancestral limits.” In a word, the policy of extermination had at last been found to give a permanent result. The meaning of that result will be found in the following table, giving the relative populations of Great Britain and Ireland during the course of the nineteenth century. It is an apt picture of the procedure of despotism.

Table showing the Relative Populations of Great Britain and Ireland
during the 19th century.

Other nations during the century have been oppressors, and other nations have been oppressed, but in the case of no other nation can the figures of relative populations tell a tale so eloquent. It stands unique, without a peer among the simplicities with which great ends are achieved.

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 In the result no part of the country and no section of the population has escaped its proportion. England in earlier years placed a Garrison Ascendancy in the country, but her hand of extirpation fell on their descendants as heavily as on the heirs of the nation’s tradition. Each province shared its equal proportion, each county, each class, each distinction of religious faith. For the first time since the extinction of the national polity there was strict impartiality.

During all this time, it must be remembered, the fertility of the race was, according to a statement read before the London Statistical Society, “ almost the greatest in Europe.” Indeed,  “among all the countries for which figures can be obtained Ireland shows an increased fertility.” While the average of deaths per 1,000 of population, during the years under review, was about 17, the average of births was about 25. Moreover, the proportion of births to the number of women of child-bearing age was much higher in Ireland than in England. Nevertheless, the population of England from 1841 onwards has been doubled, while the population of Ireland during the same time has been halved.

Some of the methods by which this result was gained will be examined in subsequent chapters, but its effect on Ireland in her place among her sisternations of Europe can be seen in the following table. In the same table the purpose sought and gained by this steadfast policy of extirpation will also be revealed. England has gained the ruin of a potential economic rival in a country of great natural wealth, but this much further she has also gained: that, in

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mere terms of population, had Ireland continued throughout the century her normal rate of increase she would stand now among the greater nations of Europe. And her rule by military force would not have proved so easy a task as, with all its difficulties, English government has found it to be.

Table showing the populations of certain countries of Europe in 1840 and in 1911.

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III — Industry

It sometimes happens that gifted men who institute new conceptions sum up all their meaning in a single luminous principle. Such a man was Thomas Wentworth, Lord Strafford, Viceroy of Ireland, 1632-1641. Few men have been more generally reprobated than he, among his own countrymen as among the nation on whom he was inflicted. Yet he only foresaw, and very ably foresaw at that distant time, the method of government in Ireland that his own countrymen were not again to bring to the like success for another two centuries. That method was rule on the spot by a highly organised administration, backed by a strong military arm, but not relying in the first resort on that arm. He described his policy under the single word “Thorough.” And as part of that policy he foresaw equally clearly its commitments in the industrial relations of the two nations. He expressed that relation quite lucidly in the following passage from one of his official letters: —

“There was little or no manufacture amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a clothing trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed by his Majesty and their lordships, in regard it would trench not only upon the clothings of England, being our staple commodity, so as if

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 they should manufacture their own wools, which grew to very great quantities, we should not only lose the profit we now made by indraping their wools, but his Majesty lose extremely by his customs, and in conclusion it might be feared they would beat us out of the trade itself , by underselling us, which they were well able to do. Besides, in reason of State, so long as they did not indrape their own wools, they must of necessity fetch their clothing from us, and consequently in a sort of way depend upon us for their livelihood, and thereby become so dependent upon this Crown as they could not depart from us without nakedness to themselves and their children.”

The protection of English industrial interests, the stifling of manufactures in Ireland where they might compete with those interests, the determination that Ireland should supply her raw materials for the purpose of English industry, the careful safeguarding of fiscal profits, and the reduction of Ireland to economic dependence on England as a necessity of State: — each guiding principle for after observance is clearly outlined in this compact statement. And those learned in the history of politics will note in the phrasing the student of Machiavelli.

Coming when he did, after a century of bitter war ending in the driving of a people forth from their land and the shattering of their polity, it was true that he found little or no manufacture amongst them but some small beginnings towards a clothing trade. That was the one industry without which they could not continue “without nakedness to themselves and

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their children.” It was not always so. Strafford spoke in touch with a living tradition when he feared that Ireland might only too successfully compete with England in finding markets for her industry. For so it had proved during the earlier centuries when a wide range of Irish manufactures became the ready merchandise of European ports. The nature of that merchandise is not the immediate concern, nor is the intricate industry on which it was based, but it is necessary to remember them while seeing the care that was now to be taken lest they should ever revive.

Yet, though Strafford so clearly foresaw the future, it was some time before the wisdom of his method was discovered. With his passing Ireland became, for another half century, the seat of war, and when that war had ceased all the wealth of the country was placed in the hands of a resident ascendancy. It was not long before they, too, discovered that the nurture and increase of that wealth required the development of an economic policy in terms of themselves as a nation; and, therefore, it was not long before they brought upon themselves the jealous anger of the very nation whose garrison they were. But this anger was expressed, not subtly by administration, but in naked decrees of prohibition passed in the English parliament. This was appropriate enough, for they were not a distinct nation, the proper objects of administration, but the agents of that foreign parliament, by whose will alone they held their place.

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So began a century of opposition, that ended finally in the cancelling of all rights. First, the export of Irish cattle to England was forbidden under heavy penalties. This was carried at the wish of English cattle-growers, and inflicted great distress in Ireland, till Irishmen turned the measure to their advantage by undertaking the curing of meat, the making of butter, leather, tallow, and the general use of the products so supplied, and overcame English commodities in their search for foreign markets. Particularly an extensive provision trade with England’s new colonies in America was opened, raw materials and manufactured articles being taken in exchange. Again English jealousy was aroused, and a measure was passed forbidding the carrying of an enumerated list of articles from America to Ireland unless they were first landed in England. The same measure also cut away the trade that had been opened with the East. This was followed up in due course by prohibiting the exportation of all woollen stuffs out of Ireland, whether to Englandor elsewhere. The sole exception was the export of frieze to England — for England did not manufacture frieze. Lest the prohibition might not be sufficient, heavy duties were placed on oil and on all implements that might be used in the manufacture of wool coming into Ireland.

Appetite grew by what it fed on. Where imposts or prohibitions failed to ruin they were made more heavy and more severe. Where they caused industry to turn to other outlets, the other outlets were searched out and in turn forbidden. The only way in which

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Ireland could have resisted some of these measures would have been by a vigorous shipping, but the Navigation Laws compelled her ships to put in at English ports, and there to pay port and warehouse dues, besides incurring extra freight and insurance, before returning to their Irish destinations. It naturally happened that Irish shipping soon disappeared from the seas, and Ireland lay helplessly at the will of English parliament and admiralty.

Each industry was taken in turn systematically. Woollen, cotton, brewing, glass, fish-curing: each in turn perished. Only the linen manufacture was permitted, since it did not conflict with any English interest. Apart from the linen industry, the only trade that remained was the provision trade with the American colonies, and this only under the severe handicap that has been seen. When, therefore, the American colonies declared their right of independence, Ireland was gravely affected, and was reduced to a perilous state.

It was an advantage that all this proceeded with the undisguised frankness of a parliament in London, dictated without pretence in the interests of English manufacturers and traders. It aroused all the more quickly the conviction that an Irish national policy would require to be developed if Ireland were economically to live.”  Ireland,” wrote Dean Swift, “is the poorest of all civilized countries with every advantage to make it one of the richest.” The fact that this poverty was of deliberate creation was burnt into the consciousness of those sentinels for England, making Irish patriots of the unlikeliest of them.

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 “This is the modern way of planting Colonies” cried another — “Et ubi solitudinem faciunt, id Imperium vocant;” and they elected to be Irish, not Imperial, henceforward, and to think for themselves as a nation. It became a matter of shame to use any article of English manufacture. Burn everything that comes from England except her coals, was pronounced by Swift as a watchword. Pikes, muskets and cannon were in due time enlisted in the cause, and military reviews were convened to give more forceful rhythm to the prose of economic resistance, displaying banners and menacing legends to demand, first that England annul her prohibitions, and second that the Irish parliament be sole and sovereign arbiter of the destinies of the nation. The Viceroy found himself unable to answer for peace if these demands were not granted, and as England was busy with war, granted they were.

So for a while Ireland received legislative independence, and though the administration was kept in English hands, and though the parliament was based on a comedy of nominated seats that enabled that administration to buy a great part of the representation, yet the effect was immediate. The export of raw materials ceased. The times were of war, when trade was not easy, but at least Ireland began to provide for herself, and to use her own raw materials for that provision. Agriculture received a further stimulus, on a protective scheme drafted to that end. All industries were protected and helped. The population at once increased rapidly, for there was a sense of security in every place. Even the helotage of the ancient

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nation was diminished as a result both of that security and of the national thought that was created. It was the time of industrial revolution, and it follows that Ireland, beginning from virtual ruin, found it difficult to compete with English industrialists who continued a vigorous development. Nevertheless, the volume of trade was considerably increased, an increase in which each industry participated.

The prosperity was deeper than appeared in the swelling trade figures. For Ireland was lifted out of a state of economic subservience. Whereas before she had exported raw material, that export being limited to England, now she imported raw materials, she ceased the exportation of her raw materials, she provided for herself instead of purchasing from England, and then, when she had won these great gains, she increased her own exports.

So deep a change was prompt in its effect. The destruction of that legislative independence was planned. Vast moneys were poured forth in the purchase of seats. Those moneys were very well spent. They were repaid in any month thereafter. Yet the plan proposed was more subtle than is sometimes thought. Speaker Foster in his great speech against the Union declared; “There can be no union of the nations while distinct interests exist, and almost every line of the plan declares the distinctness of interest.” It did. All the forms of that distinctness remained. The plan intended, however, that one interest should destroy the other, and it used all those forms to pursue that end. For Ireland still

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kept her own separate administration, her own separate establishment, her own separate executive, her own separate courts and laws. This machinery was not the English machinery, it worked its own separate will, arbitrary and irresponsible, and into that will was breathed the purposes of bondage in the reckonings of fear.

 England could now do with one hand what the other need not see. Not all at once did she learn the use of that strength. She still continued to pass measures in her parliament against Irish industry, though they were unnecessary. At the time when industrial changes were transfiguring the world it was only necessary to hold Ireland helpless under a strong administration, and time could be trusted to work the rest. The very life of industry lies in conveniency of transit, and this is a service that a nation can only render to itself through its government. It had proved the central problem of Grattan’s parliament. So now, with all transit lying at the will of an administration, not merely hostile but rapidly becoming hereditary and developing a tradition of hatred with each generation, national industry perished without the necessity of a single overt act of legislation.

Moreover, with the return of the ascendancy, in great part, to England, the wealth of the country, rack-rented from every part, passed to be spent in England. The capital that in every other country accumulated within its territory for its own use, was withdrawn from Ireland and invested in English ventures. Enterprise could not resist an adminis-

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tration that opposed it at every turn, or overlay it with stubborn inertness, and neither could it find within the country its own proper wealth for development.

Finally came an evil that broke the last strength of industry. Other nations entered into quick rivalry in the opening up of railways. In every case these railroads followed, as by a natural course, the old great trade routes, since these were the natural arteries of exchange and supply. To these routes, at the height of industrial competition, the new railroads lent a further swiftness and convenience, linking industrial centres with one another and with the ports through which markets were found. Not so with Ireland. In Ireland railways were at first delayed. When finally a Commission was appointed to survey the routes to be chosen it contained certain military members who dominated its policy, with the result that they chose routes based on military strategy, not on economic need. Ireland was regarded by them merely as a conquest to be defended; her whole coast-line was conceived of as an entrenchment behind which they were to build a ready system of supply. They avoided trade routes because these created trunk-lines, by the seizure of which an invader might strike into the heart of the country. Grain centres might humanly wish to be connected with markets, but from the point of view of militarism it was essential that such centres should be linked with junctions of supply (such as Mallow), where no markets were available for them. The pivots of the system were not ports and industrial centres, but

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military depots, such as the Curragh, Kilmainham (at Kingsbridge station), Enniskillen, and Belfast. The engineer selected to survey one of the routes chosen reported: “ The lines for the most part pass over lands of comparatively little worth, and in many cases of no value at all, particularly in the bog districts and in the western parts of Cork.” The same was true of every part of Ireland. The country was covered with a devious and senseless network of railways that gave accessibility to nothing.

The result was inevitable. The main trade-routes were in all cases neglected, with the consequence that the factories of such towns as Carlow, Kilkenny, Clonmel and Fermoy fell into decay, following the looms of the remoter country districts, and in their ruins testify to-day of strangled industry. The great city of Waterford, from which ships had carried Irish wares to all European ports, was placed on a branch-line, and its foundries and ship-building, its sail-making and cut-glass industries fell into decay. Cork and Limerick were also placed on branch-lines, and one existed on a passing ocean trade, while over the other there passed the shadow of industrial death. North and South were divided by a great barrier. The western ports of Limerick, Galway, Westport and Sligo, facing the new world, being unconnected with industrial or agricultural centres, were ruined. Miles of great warehouses line their quays to-day unused and in ruins. For though the railroads gave them access to nothing that they needed, they destroyed the older communications. Belfast gained, being then a military depot, but in all other parts of

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 the country the loss of all convenience and the multiplication of freights brought the last disaster.

Not the least advantage to England of her system of railroads was one of which she was to make the greatest use. As she was the base from which troops were to come, all railroads centred and turned towards her. They were pivoted upon her, and in many cases, such was the system, parts of the country had speedier access to her than to one another. Therefore the supply and demand they naturally gathered about them were also bent towards her, so that it needed but the least direction of the public departments she established in the country to bring both supply and demand to her at her own prices. The western ports, Ireland’s natural avenues of exchange, and Europe’s outlook to America, were closed as though by iron bars. Two hundred years after Swift wrote, his words are still true: “The conveniency of ports which nature has bestowed so liberally upon this kingdom, is of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon.”

This advantage England was strong to retain, for it meant to her the happiest of her hunting-grounds. Virtually only Belfast, Dublin and Cork contained industries of any moment, for direct access to the sea gave them a certain independence, and of these Belfast was particularly encouraged because its political disagreement with the nation was an important weapon in England’s hand. During the later part of the century public departments were established in the country. They were established by Acts of

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 the English parliament, ostensibly to serve the country on whose establishment they were placed. Some of them were the result of national agitation. But they were passed into the separate Irish administration, they were annealed in one single will, and they perfected the organisation by which, from the schoolroom up through every human activity, the official grasp was present to bring every activity into subservience, or to stifle it if it resisted.

The ways in which this operated were insidious. Seldom did it take the shape that lent itself to publicity, for exposure woke resistance, and turned international attention to a subject on which England was exceedingly sensitive. The richest of her markets was at issue, and her European zeal for subject nations, by which she weakened competing empires, was at stake. Therefore, though the will never slept, it rarely exerted itself in any overt act. Indeed, in the nature of its control, such overt acts were seldom necessary. Enterprise was baffled in great part without their aid. For example, such enterprise in the modern world depends on the creation of joint stock companies, and joint stock companies depend in their turn, first on the national circulation of capital, and then on a free market and quotation for their stock. Neither of these is possible in Ireland. There is no money market in Ireland; the circulation of her capital is centred on London. Irish money is carried to London for the use of English companies who trade in Ireland, and Irish companies see the capital of their own country used to crush the industry of their own country, not only

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 without a public service to remedy the evil, but with a public service that thoughtfully designed the system in an alien interest. And it is impossible to correct the evil by other methods, for Ireland is without an open stock market. For in Ireland no stockbroker may practise without an English government license. The result is that only certain sorts of men become stockbrokers, and only certain sorts of stock are quoted without prejudice. So, without a single definable act in any given instance the whole weight of the system is used to compel the registration of stock companies in London, and to stultify Irish industry at the very inception of enterprise.

If such things failed, other methods were ready. For example, the Irish company of Dunlops was formed in Dublin to develop an Irishman’s invention that promised to revise all vehicular traffic, the pneumatic tyre. It won its way past the first difficulties, and an Irish industry was established with a great future before it. Then it was countered by more direct action, while yet not so overt that government action could be publicly alleged. For at that time all bicycle improvements were exploited by means of the racing tracks; unless such improvements could establish themselves by that means they were destined for failure, and the pneumatic tyre was such an invention. The Association, however, that governed such tracks was English, and it framed a rule forbidding the use of the pneumatic tyre — that is to say, the use of the Dunlop tyre manufactured in Ireland — on any racing track. It was alleged that it was dangerous to life. The severest tests were offered in disproof, but the

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 prohibition remained. In the meantime every effort was made to dislodge the company from Dublin. The matter won some notoriety at the time, and no one in either nation doubted for a moment what was the real point at issue. For a time the company held its ground. Then an agitation arose in suspicious circles complaining of the inconvenience caused by the factory, and it became necessary for the company to remove its factory premises. Another site in Dublin was discovered, but the moment was chosen for the suggestion, backed by official pressure, that it should remove, not to another site in Ireland, but to England. Faced by this steadfast opposition, that threatened ruin, the company did so remove, and built its factories in England. Then the prohibition was removed, and it was discovered that the pneumatic tyre was a remarkable patent of great importance. To-day Dunlops is one of the leading English companies, with an international trade.

Still the action was not overt. If necessary, however, overt action was ready in the last resort. In 1913 it was discovered that, as a result of the revision of the United States tariff, Ireland had begun to open trade with America. This was a vital matter, as it threatened England’s monopoly. As Ireland possessed little ocean-going shipping, the trade was carried from Queenstown by the English Cunard Line. In the charter by which the Cunard Line received its government subsidy, it was stipulated that it should make Queenstown a port of call. By the same charter it came under Government control. And it was announced that the

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Cunard Line had cancelled its callings at Queenstown, charter stipulations nothwithstanding. In answer to questions, Government announced that, unfortunately, Queenstown was not available for vessels of such deep draught. The discovery was a little belated, and it, strangely, did not hinder Queenstown from being used during the war by the warships of more than one nation, of the deepest draught. When certain Irishmen wrote of the matter in English journals, giving full facts clearly set forth, there was no answer. The silence was rigid, the decision was unalterable. Therefore, negotiations were opened with the German Hamburg-America Line, which agreed to take Queenstown as a port of call. What passed thereafter between the chancelleries of England and Germany must remain a matter of conjecture, but the Hamburg-America Line after a while regretted its inability to fulfil its promise. Thus the Irish trade was once more turned back through Liverpool, and, faced by added freight and extra port dues, it perished, as it was intended that it should perish.

About the same time, in 1911, private enterprise found capital, with the intention of opening up the port of Galway for transatlantic trade. The Premier of Canada was approached for the help of his Government in the matter. He replied that he and his colleagues approved of the project; he stated “ that the undertaking was in the interest of Canada, but,” he added, “ before his Ministry would move in the matter, they should be satisfied the English Government approved.” The promoter of the project approached the English Government, and he has testi-

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fied as to the result. “Would any country,” he says, ‘• on the face of the globe, situated as Ireland is, be without a Transatlantic port? It is unanimously called for by Ireland, it is cordially approved of and desired by Canada and Newfoundland — surely their desire should receive consideration ! Then why has not the work been carried out ? For no other reason except the refusal of the Government to assist the undertaking, notwithstanding that a large proportion of the capital is now available, contingent on the Government doing their part in this great national project; their standing aside practically boycots the scheme.”

The “standing aside,” however, was not neglect. It was part of the fixed policy of silence and masterly inactivity. Yet not only were the western ports barred by iron gates, and all supply and demand forced to England, but the very freights between Ireland and England are decreed by English companies without remedy. During the war the Government instituted a system of insurance against submarine risks, and the cost of this was covered in extra freights. At the conclusion of war the added freight charge was continued, though its occasion had passed. Ruined in her shipping, Ireland has no remedy, though in the single item of coal the difference costs her each year a million pounds sterling.

Always, however specious the occasion, the intention to destroy reveals itself. One of the largest industries remaining in Ireland is that of Brewing. Its distinctive quality is the greater specific gravity of Irish beers as compared with other beers, and by

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virtue of this quality it has established its name and created a considerable trade. In 191 7 a regulation was announced limiting the output of all beers above a certain specific quality. The result was that, whereas before the regulation Irish beers overcame the rivalry of English beers in England, on the issue of that order English beers won back their own ground and established themselves in Ireland.

To so natural a thought of the vassaldom of Ireland has this policy brought the expectation of the people of England that nothing now will more quickly stir them to amazed anger than the suggestion that industries are about to be established in Ireland. It has been seen that in the early decades of the eighteenth century Ireland’s contact with America was sought to be ruined by hostile legislation. This legislation was passed as the result of monster petitions to parliament and indignant meetings. The same scenes were enacted two centuries later when, in 1916, Henry Ford, an American citizen, bought lands in Cork City on which to build a factory for motor tractors. English indignation was at once stirred, with results that should be amazing but that they are habitual. Meetings were called to voice the protest. Parliament was called upon to intervene. The Press was rallied to the cause, both by personal letter and in editorial comment. It was asked if there were not suitable English cities, that this American should go to Cork. One trade paper very frankly and lucidly explained that there would be no further cause for disturbance if Mr. Henry Ford could but be induced to choose Liverpool instead of Cork. Even the war

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 was put out of many minds by the distressing portent of an American factory in Cork.

However, the situation was delicate. Ireland had lately become the world’s attention, and Henry Ford was the citizen of a nation whose aid was hoped for in the war. So other means than Government hostility were adopted. Riots were reported in the English Press as disturbing the peace of Cork, though the citizens of Cork, strangely, had not been aware of them. They failed, and the Ford Company was established, though whether its troubles are yet concluded is another matter.

Now other methods are in project. It is assumed that Ireland cannot further be excluded from the attention of the world. Therefore, it is being proposed in the English financial Press that English investors should take control of Irish industrial resources, in order that subsequent development should “ be to their pecuniary advantage.” It is discovered that the wisdom of such investments “was convincingly demonstrated so far back as during the sitting of the Industrial Commission of 1886.” It was curious that the years between should have found that convincing demonstration neglected so sadly. It is recommended that large parts of Irish land and its resources should be made over to English companies, in order that thus England might still continue, in another guise, her monopoly in Ireland. For that monopoly she holds to-day, as the result of a long and sleepless policy of destruction relentlessly pursued, to her sole advantage, by the ruin of Ireland and the exclusion of all other nations.

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IV. — Agriculture.

Fynes Moryson, Secretary to Lord Mountjoy, in the campaign by which the last of independence was overthrown in Ireland, wrote of the scenes he saw. He spoke in wonder of “ground so manured, the fields so orderly fenced, the towns so frequently” (that is, so freely) “inhabited, and the highways and paths so well beaten as the Lord Deputy now found them. The reason whereof was that the queen’s forces during these wars never till then came amongst them.” He spoke, too, of the reluctant pity with which he saw such smiling plenty destroyed by a soldiery who went out, as he describes, as specially armed with implements for the burning of crops and homesteads as weapons for the slaying of men.

Many other writers at that time described scenes that testified to the high degree of orderly agriculture where peace had permitted development, while the English State Papers abound in descriptions of tracts of country being systematically laid waste from end to end by fire.

From that time to this, during three hundred years, those scenes have never been restored, for the hand that destroyed them is still the hand that rules in Ireland. Even when war had ceased its work at the close of the seventeenth century, the land lay at the feet of a people no further interested in its de-

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 velopment. The vast forests had been burned down, and their ruins choked the streams, turning fertile valleys into bogland. The old, careful fences were scattered wide. The orchards were not even a memory. Homesteads and bawns were no more. The people lived in mud hovels, with neither hope nor security. The land was owned in wide estates by strangers whose only concern was to lift rents from them, and at first even less to lift rents than to place further chains upon them.

For, in another form, the war still continued, and it is necessary to see this to understand the canker that ate the heart of development. When the English parliament prohibited the export of woollen stuffs from Ireland, the landlords were in dismay, but the people were in delight. Archbishop King points to that delight; for, says he,”  they reckon that the lands will be generally tenanted by them, they being most numerous, if the gentlemen be obliged to throw up their flocks.” The people were awaiting, if only hopelessly, the day when they could once more enter into possession of their land, and those who had seized their land depended on armed force to defend their conquest. For another two hundred years, while that issue remained undecided, it is impossible to speak in any true sense of agriculture in Ireland.

A passing relief was given during the years of legislative independence. Under the legislation of the English parliament, Ireland had become almost wholly a pastoral country, with a population driven, either overseas, or in hungry bands to beg along the roads and in the cities. Therefore, in 1784, the

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Dublin parliament, quickened by a national sense in its hour of responsibility, undertook legislation to secure the population by turning pasture once again to tillage. Duties were placed on the importation of corn and other produce, bounties were given on their exportation, and their exportation was prohibited when they rose above certain prices. Yet these measures were rather defensive than preferential. An attempt was made to balance as nearly as possible the same measures in England, so that the two countries might compete under conditions of equality. At the same time other measures were passed to overcome the difficulties of transit within the country, by helping land carriage and coastwise shipping.

The result of this Act was immediate. It was estimated that a million and a half acres extra were tilled within twenty years of its passing. Within four years the exports of produce increased fivefold, and within eight years tenfold. The importation of produce from England fell away at once. Nor was this at the expense of pasture. As a contemporary has testified; “Though the tillage of Ireland appears to have been wonderfully extended by the operations of this Act, its pasture land has not experienced the least diminution; on the contrary, its quantity has been evidently augmented.” The chief benefit, however, was within the country, for the population was secured, and a little measure of prosperity was found for it.

Such was the result of legislative freedom, and so that freedom was promptly broken. The European War, and then the Rising and its brutal suppression

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in 1798, had arrested the progress towards the close of the century, and after the passing of the Act of Union, matters rapidly became as bad as they could possibly be. Rents were increased, by a landlordry now almost wholly absentee, three, four and five hundredfold. Once again there was no agriculture; there was only the desperate struggle of a population to cling to their land, and to enter into any engagements that enabled them so to cling, but from which they were brushed to make way for more foolhardy bidders. If they remained, the least display that might be taken as prosperity — a flower in the window or a calf in the byre — caused their rents at once to be further racked. Nor could they demur, for they were tenants at the absolute will of the lord. When it is remembered that the absolute will did not even respect the honour of wives and daughters, and could rely on imperial bayonets for its protection (as is testified by contemporaries), it will be seen that to speak of any such thing as agriculture would be a misuse of terms.

Then the people fought for their possession, and fought the war by the only tactics left to them. It was hand and life by night and day on either side. In military terms, the nation deployed itself, lived in deployment, slept in deployment, each generation becoming a fighting unit with the coming of manhood, and often before, till the enemy was pressed back and back, each stage being sealed in Acts of the English parliament that were accepted as treaties, and the people’s right to their land was at length finally acknowledged.

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Then agriculture became possible again. By that time agriculture in England had declined, whereas the population had greatly increased. Therefore, since the unhappy geographical fact of Ireland could not be imperially annulled, it was desired to turn defeat to victory by decreeing an agricultural destiny for Ireland. Since Ireland contumaciously insisted on living, let her become England’s purveyor and provider— of course, at England’s prices, and at her discretion.

With that understanding development has been encouraged, in the hope, sometimes expressed only too eagerly, that Irishmen would peacefully accept an agricultural future instead of nurturing foolish thoughts of industry. Having no shipping with which to reach the world, having no considerable industrial population of her own to stimulate supply, it was expected that her produce would flow to England. And it did flow to England, at prices at which England could not hope to purchase elsewhere, and England’s manufactures were exchanged for them, even though, in both price and quality, it would better suit Ireland to buy elsewhere.

At first the Department of Agriculture established to tend this interest did not prove suppliant, and it was not very necessary that it should. The general f)osition insured the exchange, and agricultural development in Ireland could only extend it. Established in the first instance by Irish initiative, this Department included, and still includes, a popularly elected Council. Yet that Council is merely advisory. While its chief is inclined to accept such advice,

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development can proceed. But that chief is not bound by the advice given him. He is appointed by the EngHsh Government, and is ruled by that Government. Thus the control of English interests continually tightened. This chief decrees policy: the Council can only protest, or on occasion revise. And as the members of the Council are many of them elected by local bodies, themselves under the direct control of another English department, it was inevitable that the Council should not prove merely futile, but, in the event, not even directly representative of agriculture. [1]

Thus, even within the territory outlined for Irish agriculture, a forward policy was impossible. It was never intended that it should be possible. In all countries forward policies are only possible in the degree in which their governments render them public facilities; and Ireland’s government is England’s will. For example, it has frequently been urged that Ireland should develop the growth of sugar-beet. Much of her soil, too rich, naturally and by continuous pasture, to bring ordinary crops of corn to a standing harvest, is peculiarly suited for such a policy. Yet it would require a concerted policy and much organised effort to be conducted on the scale required. That, in its turn, would require facilities in the use of land now uninhabited and unused except by wide and wasteful pasture. Such development, however, would naturally create the

1. An English Chief Secretary once perfectly described the situation “The Board proposes; the Council discusses; but the Department does what it damned well likes.”

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 erection of sugar refineries, and as the sugar refineries of Great Britain would thereby incur competition, and as such refineries would lead Ireland on the way to an industrial future, all progress along that direction finds official inertness lying across its path.

Moreover, the most lucrative forms of agriculture require an industrial population at near hand, and for the lack of this Ireland is restricted in the only activity allowed her. Agriculture only is permitted her; within that again, only certain forms of agriculture; and within that again, only certain developments of those forms. For, when Irish agricultural products were carried, not to England, but to America, it has been seen that English shipping at once avoided Irish ports of call. If such trade were opened, prices with England would in time be rectified, and American goods in exchange would directly enter Irish ports, so avoiding the extra port dues, warehouse fees, transhipment costs, and agency percentages that they must now incur before they can compete with English goods in Ireland. So the industry to which Irish efforts were limited was itself delimited by reducing Ireland to a strictly subordinate place in England’s economic scheme.

Even within that further delimitation it is still bound. For some years prior to the war the exportation of cattle to England had proceeded so energetically that it had not only advantaged English markets but had also seriously affected English cattle-growers. In 1914 it was discovered that Foot and Mouth Disease had broken out among Irish cattle, and the English Department of Agriculture in London for

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 bade the further importation of Irish cattle. The EngHsh Department of Agriculture in Dublin was set aside. Therefore, Irishmen themselves took up the matter. They denied the existence of Foot and Mouth Disease in Ireland, and challenged the arbitrament of neutral experts from the Continent of Europe. They appealed to any court whose fairness and disinterestedness would be clear, for they alleged that the embargo had reference, not to disease, but to competition with English interests. The challenge was declined; the decision of English experts could not be called in question; the embargo was to itself sufficient. At the height of the controversy, however, the European War broke out, and the supply of foodstuffs in England became a matter for serious thought. At once the embargo was lifted. It is at least comforting to think that, among the many unhappy effects of the war, its influence should have been so immediately healthy on diseased cattle in Ireland. And how splendid to think of the way in which Irish cattle rose to the situation their responsibilities demanded of them !

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V. — Natural Resources.

 Englishmen in each century from the fifteenth have left on record their descriptions of Ireland. Were these to be placed in succession, a remarkable history of spoliation would be revealed. Visibly, in their record, the natural endowments of Ireland are seen in each century to disappear from sight. No one record succeeding to another (with the single exception of records dealing with the 17 years of legislative independence), has failed to testify to greater ruin, till, to-day, it would not be possible to recognise in the Ireland that looks forward into the 20th century, any likeness to the Ireland that left the i6th. “For this Ireland,” said Bacon, “being another Britain, as Britain was said to be another world, is endowed with so many dowries of nature (considering the Fruitfulness of the Soil, the Ports, the Rivers, the Fishings, the Quarries, the Woods, and other Materials, and specially, the Race and Generation of Men, valiant, hard and active), as it is not easy, no not upon the Continent, to find such Confluence of Commodities, if the Hand of Man did join with the Hand of Nature.”

Not by any hazard — not even by the hazard of war — does this bounteous description tell of times that are past. When war had concluded its work, policy continued its intention. The dowries of Nature remain the dowries still, but calculated ruin and systematic neglect have, in fact, caused so complete a desert that it is now difficult to discover what in fact

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 those dowries are. So well has policy worked that it has, in fact, covered no small part of its own traces. It is, therefore, difficult to indicate the natural resources of Ireland, other than to say that the more obvious of them are entirely and systematically neglected, while no attempt was made to explore the possibilities of further wealth. Where, in other countries, the discovery and use of their natural wealth have been some of the chief work of government, in Ireland the chief work of government has been to thrust these things out of sight, and, if possible, put them out of mind.

No materials, therefore, exist by which the natural resources of Ireland may be exactly estimated. The methods by which England’s economic self-will has been exerted to the ruin of Ireland may be seen in the restriction of trade, in the destruction of industry, in the limitation of agriculture; but they are exceedingly difficult to illustrate in regard to the unused wealth of the land. The methods of inactivity elude direct mention, and can only be displayed in their results.

Yet it happens that those results have been the subject of enquiry. In 1885 the English parliament appointed a Commission to investigate the decay of Irish industry. The procedure of imperial government in Ireland, in the careful and deliberate neglect of the natural resources of Ireland, could not be better exhibited than in an examination of the proceedings of this Commission. For, so systematic has that neglect been, it would fail diligence to estimate the full measure of those resources.

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The Commission returned no report. It stated that it could not collect evidence sufficient for a report, but it was, in fact, faced by a situation that admitted of no report. Its terms of reference, covering, as they did, the whole range of industry, were the terms of reference, not of a Commission, but of a national government continuously occupied with exploring the proper outlets for a people’s enterprise. Confronted by an absolute neglect of a nation’s resources — a neglect entangled in a long history — it could do no more than silently return the evidence it had surveyed. And that act proved more eloquent than many words.

For, in the course of the enquiry, evidence was offered to show some of the neglected wealth of the country. It was not pretended that the evidence covered all the possible wealth. The inadequacy of the evidence was, in fact, frankly confessed. Skilled experiment would be required before the mineral wealth could be truly discovered, and much cost would need to be incurred. Moreover, true exploration depends on development, and where there is no development the hand of science is without strength. That is to say, the evidence dealt only with knowledge of the obvious, and left outside its review the knowledge that comes of use and constant, skilled experiment. Therefore, in passing some of the evidence briefly in review, it is necessary to remember its confessed limitation.

Evidence was called, for example, with regard to the Coal deposits. It was stated that there are within the knowledge of scientific enquiry, seven coal

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 districts in Ireland. Of these only two are being worked, if, indeed, the difficulties they encounter permit it to be said of them that they are being worked. These two lie in the provinces of Leinster and Connacht. In the province of Munster there are two coal districts. Of them it was stated by Sir Robert Kane, that there were the “most extensive development of the coal strata in the British Empire,” and, if it be true, as Professor Hull suggested before the Industrial Commission, that this statement was “ made under a misapprehension,” it is yet true that these districts cover considerable parts of five counties, and that not one shaft pierces the ground to use or to explore that natural wealth. Similarly, in the province of Ulster, according to the same authority, two separate districts are known, and of them neither is now being either used or explored. Yet of one of these it was stated that it contained “seams that would bear comparison with any coal in Great Britain,” and that the visible area covered a concealed area of many times its own wealth. Reckoning only the wealth of coal that lay within visible calculation. Professor Hull provided the Commission with the following table: —

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 The same authority suggested that “Government aid might in some way be afforded for the purpose of making experimental borings,” with a view to discovering more precisely the wealth that lay concealed, but when it is remembered that of these districts mentioned by him only two are being worked, and that these two incur much obstruction, owing to transit and other difficulties that in any other country would at once be the attention of administration, it is clear that borings for the discovery of further wealth are scarcely likely to be undertaken. [1]

Yet in the records of history there is a striking contrast with this vain hope for Government aid. The independent parliament of 1689, sometimes known as the Patriot Parliament, among its thirty-five Acts, passed one particularly “prohibiting the importation of English, Scotch, or Welsh coals into this kingdom”  of Ireland. In its preamble it was declared that “the great scarcity of money now in this kingdom “ was due to certain “persons not well affected to the Government transporting considerable sums of money into England, Holland and other remote parts,*’ and it stated that the “ great quantity of English, Scotch and Welsh coals “ imported into Ireland had ruined Irish coalfields, although, in fact, that importation had greatly increased the price of coal in Ireland. Therefore, that importation was altogether forbidden, and a special effort was to be made to encourage the working of Irish coalfields.

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The parliament that passed this Act was shortly overwhelmed, and from that date the exploitation of Irish coalfields has declined, till, to-day, it may almost be said that it no longer exists.

It is the same with other mineral wealth. Speaking of iron. Professor Hull further stated that in one county alone there was “ an area of about 167 square miles containing pisolitic iron ore.” This was, he said, ‘‘ of the best iron ore, containing about 40 per cent, of iron, besides a very large quantity of inferior or aluminous ore,” that lay “at no very great depth.” Yet “not one ton “ was smelted, and the little that was mined was exported to England from the ship-building port of Belfast, though it is of a kind”  called ‘ soft-steel,’ that is a tenacious kind of steel highly adaptable for ship-building.” Somewhat pathetically, he added: “I think the proximity of Tyrone to the Antrim Ironfield and to Loch Allen,” where other deposits of iron are available, “ought to enable the two minerals to be brought readily together.” “I think there is abundance of iron in the country to supply the local demand even of the great manufacturing districts of the north.” Nevertheless, little is mined, none is smelted. So much as is mined is taken to smelting works in England, and what remains in the earth disturbs even less the course of English trade.

The limited range of the evidence of unused wealth is frankly admitted. Turning to Lead, he said, in a revealing phrase, that “there are lead mines scattered over various parts of Ireland,” but “unfortunately, there never have been any proper mining plans pre

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 served in Ireland from former times, and all one knows about them is hearsay.” Those”  former times “ of which he spoke were when a nation was busied in its own interest. The wealth with which they were concerned passed from sight; the very places that explored it passed from memory, when that nation was administered for a rival’s advantage. And, therefore, when expert opinion was sought as to the range of possible wealth, it was constrained to admit the limits of its knowledge as compared with days before Science brought to other nations the revelation of their riches.

He spoke of Gold, of Silver, Copper, Sulphur, in many parts; of the raw materials of Cement, of Serpentine, Granite and Building Stones, in many parts; of Felspar and of Potter Clays. “Some years ago,” it was stated, “40,000 or 50,000 tons of copper ore were raised yearly in the South-western parts of Ireland”; two years before the Commission this had dropped to 183 tons; now none is raised. Other testimony was offered of Marble, “ in all parts of the country, which, both as to price and colour, compared favourably with foreign marbles,” and should be a “fruitful source of benefit to this country.” Most of these were unused. None of them was fully explored, or turned to their utmost profit. “With the burning down of the last of the Irish forests at the close of the seventeenth century,” wrote Sir Robert Kane, “the fires for smelting iron were extinguished, and that great branch of industry, which had existed for centuries, ceased.” The Irish forests were the last refuge of an independent nation, and with the sub

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 mergence of that nation all these other many industries ceased, though they had existed for centuries, and the wealth which they had brought to use was quietly permitted to pass out of knowledge.

For this Industrial Commission, brought into being by the English parliament, bears another and an unsuspected testimony. It is unnecessary to mention other products for which, as raw material, modern science has discovered advantages that wait upon their use. Many such exist, and in other nations skill and application would have sped ahead to search out their advantage, but the Industrial Commission makes mock of any further enquiry into unused natural resources. For the fact is that over thirty years have passed since the evidence it gathered was first printed, and since then the hand that thrust Ireland’s natural wealth out of sight has continued its work unhindered.

Complaint was made by one of the Irish Commissioners that even in the cases “of assistance afforded, or intended to be afforded, by Parliament, there has been the greatest difficulty in getting them carried into effect in Ireland itself, owing to the action of the Government officers.” That is to say, though parliaments may, under whatever occasion, act in ignorance or in contempt of England’s tradition policy in regard to Ireland, that policy still remains in the safe care of her government. So the English parliament appointed this Industrial Commission, before which remarkable evidence was offered of Ireland’s neglected wealth. The only result was that to the neglect of the wealth was added the neglect of the evidence. And more: the policy of ruin also

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continued, for much of the private effort that was then put forth to turn that wealth to use, has now surrendered a task beset with too many hindrances to make its effort profitable.

The methods by which this result is attained are manifold and intricate, though they may all be comprised in a sensitive and alert inactivity. From the schoolroom, to the agents of distribution, the hand of government controls all uneasy thoughts concerning the country’s natural wealth. Technical education in Ireland is not even a scandal: it does not exist. Any attempt, therefore, to open up the natural wealth of the country is at once encountered by the difficulty of procuring skilled labour. If this difficulty be overcome, private undertakings are faced by the railway system. Instances were given before the Industrial Commission — of industries, of potteries, of bricks — founded near their necessary raw materials, that have been crushed out of existence by high freights.

More recently black marble and serpentine from Co. Galway were required for the building of Columbia College, in the United States. The port of Galway lay within a few miles. Nevertheless, it was necessary to carry a great part by road, and, finally, to ship to Glasgow before it was possible for lines to be found serving to America. In matters of this kind, inertness need never become openly hostile to be effective. Yet hostility is not lacking. When a company was ready with capital to convert the rivers Shannon and Erne into horse power sufficient to supply the factories, railways and tramways of the entire country for their needs,

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and to supply this power at a fifth of the cost waterpower was available in England, before the work could proceed, government powers were necessary to construct both works and conveyance. These powers were stubbornly refused.

Companies have been formed to open up fully the Coal deposits of Connacht and Leinster. It was shown that the estimates given before the Industrial Commission of the range of coal deposits in Ulster were greatly short of likelihood. Before the work in Connacht could proceed it was necessary to procure the power to construct the required railways. No moneys were asked. The moneys were ready if the powers would be given. The local municipal and other bodies petitioned that these powers be granted. Yet they were persistently refused. The Leinster companies proceed under great difficulties as to transport.

Much attention has recently been given in private circles to the unused natural wealth of Ireland.

It has even been shown that hedges are being built in the Co. Clare of ore containing up to 80 per cent, of zinc. It has been shown that a period of unexampled prosperity lies before the country if this unused wealth could be developed. Moneys have been subscribed for this development, but at every point private enterprise is met by determined hostility. Not only is the English government of Ireland stubbornly inert, when by thoughtful activity government could open up the use of all this neglected wealth, but when private enterprise, for its own profit, is willing to

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undertake the task, it bars the way by not giving the legal facilities that are required.

It even turns its right hand against the left in its haste to obstruct. In 1917 an expert Committee was appointed in Ireland to investigate the Peat Resources of the nation. The Committee was comprised of energetic Irishmen with a will for national development. It collected a mass of Evidence; duly reported that there were 6,000,000,000 tons of Peat in the country, with a Coal-equivalent of over 3,000,000,000 tons; and advised as to the means by which this great wealth could be realised. The Government required that all the Evidence and the Report should at once be sent to London. There it was safely shelved Out of harm’s way, and there it at present as safely lies, unpublished because strictly unpublishable. The Chairman of this Committee was the eminent engineer. Sir John Griffith. Two years later the same gentleman was appointed Chairman of a Water-power Committee. During his later inquiries he and his Committee requested the use of the Evidence given before the earlier Peat Committee. The request was refused. He who had acquired the Evidence was refused knowledge of the Evidence he had acquired. For that Evidence revealed the fact that Ireland, irrespective of other fuels, had in Peat alone fuel enough to develop industry and bring her many resources into use. And so, alone among all countries, Ireland lies to-day with not one of her many resources of natural wealth opened for use, lest she should arise, first to prove a rival, and then, strengthened by wealth, to dispute her bonds.

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VI. — Finance.

In treating of the financial relations between Ireland and England it is necessary to define clearly the limited meaning within which the phrase is used. It is not possible to estimate the profits of empire in the material conquest of Ireland. It is not possible to estimate the value of “the land of Ireland forcefully taken early in the seventeenth century, of the rents } for that land forcefully abstracted for three hundred years, of the price demanded for the return of that land. It is not possible to estimate the ruin of the potential wealth of that land for three hundred years. It is not possible to estimate the ruin of Irish industries wrought by design and for gain, or the consequent benefit of English industries. It is not possible to estimate their destruction while in being, of their stifling as they came into being, or the measures devised lest they should come into being. It is not possible to estimate the value of the vast forests, of the stretching harvests, of the priceless manuscripts, of the countless quiet homesteads, burned, and burned by cool imperial calculation, by imperial armies. It is not possible to estimate the value of the mines, not ruined, it is true, while in working, but ruined from working, for three hundred and more years. It is not possible to estimate the value of the shipping, not only destroyed while in being, but destroyed from coming into being for the same time. Especially, it is not possible to estimate the value of the

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lives slain by imperial soldiery, not merely of soldiers slain in combat, but of non-combatant men, women, and little children butchered by victorious armies, of the lives slain by artificial famine recurrent for two centuries because of the imperial intention to subdue, of the lives slain by pestilence following in its wake, of the lives lost through extirpation and emigration, cunningly caused and helped.

When nations war for a brief five years, their peace congresses appoint special commissions to estimate these things. No special commission could estimate them in a war of seven hundred years. It can only be said that if they were estimated, and their price was restored, England would sink to the poorest of the nations, and Ireland would rise to the wealthiest. In estimating, therefore, the financial relations between the two nations, in the special sense that term has come to wear, no account is taken of these larger and juster values.

Account is only taken of certain financial responsibilities deliberately incurred by England in an instrument imposed on Ireland by force and craft during the course of that war in the year 1800, called the Act of Union. Ireland was no party to that instrument. She has always protested againt it, appealed against it, agitated against it, and warred against it. England, solely of her own responsibility, drafted its conditions, and enforced them by arms.

Nor is any account taken of the course of taxation to the benefit of England prior to that Act of Union. Simply, the year 1800 is taken because of that Act, and according to the stipulations of that Act, and

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 according to certain of its provisions by which those stipulations are presumed to be governed, an attempt is made to estimate the degree in which one of the two nations stands in debt to the other. That subject has been the theme of much enquiry, and several Commissions, royal and otherwise, have been appointed by the English parliament to consider it. In great measure the subject is an unreal one. It recognises two separate entities of taxable capacity, while recognising only one entity for the purpose of expenditure. It admits two fundamentally dissociate and separate nationalities as the issue under enquiry, while insisting only on one in the thought of government. Also, it is unreal because it never permits reference to the oppressive means by which prosperity is ruined and baulked, though that ruin governs the whole case. Again, it is unreal because the figures placed before these enquiries cannot be verified, nor can the methods by which they are reached be checked, inasmuch as they are furnished by the very authorities that bring about the alleged injustice. The unreality is concluded by the fact that the reports of these enquiries have never yet been heeded. In no single instance has one of these Commissions effected the least change. They are appointed to snare agitation into a net of words, and when that has been accomplished, the subject is put by till agitation breaks forth again.

Nevertheless, some of these Commissions have come to conclusions so remarkable that they have constantly been quoted. Appointed, as they have been, at England’s own instance, these conclusions

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are in effect national admissions of a debt incurred and injustice caused under an instrument for which England alone is responsible. The most noteworthy of these Commissions was the Royal Commission on the Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland. It was appointed in 1894, and sat for two years. All of its conclusions are important, yet only some of them affect the present argument.

By Article 7 of the Act of Union it was provided that for a period of twenty years the exchequers of the two countries should remain separate, and that the joint expenditure of the United Kingdom should be defrayed in the proportion of fifteen parts for Great Britain, and two parts for Ireland. It was provided that at the end of that time, or when the respective debts of the two countries stood in the proportion of their contributions, the two exchequers should be consolidated. From that time Ireland was to cease to exist in any real sense as a separate fiscal entity, the proportions of contribution should cease, and “all future expense thenceforth to be incurred, together with the interest and charges of all joint debts contracted previous to such declaration, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each country .... subject only to such particular exemptions and abatements in Ireland .... as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand.” In the debates in the Irish parliament attention was given to the financial provisions of the Act. “Though I do not think,” said Grattan, “the means of this country are unequal to every necessary

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 expense, yet I do think they are inadequate to that contributory expense which the Union stipulates. … The attempt will exhaust the country at the same time that it enslaves her. Colour it as you please, Ireland will pay more than she is able.” Barely was the Act passed than the truth of these words were proved. At the time of Union, the debts of Great Britain and Ireland were, respectively, £446, 500,000 and;(;28, 500,000; that is, in the proportion of 15 to i It was confidently asserted by the drafters of the Act that the debt of Great Britain would drop, and that the debt of Ireland would not materially increase, and that thus the proportion of 15 to 2 would be achieved. Instead of which, by 181 7 the debts were, respectively, £737, 000,000 and £i 12,500,000: that is, in the proportion of 6^ to i. Ireland’s debt had been racked up to more than the required proportion, and in the result her vitality had been so deeply injured that in several cases increases in taxation had actually resulted in decreases of revenue. The process had already begun whereby the proper course of taxation in England should be relieved by the improper course of taxation in Ireland — that is to say, the English people should levy a disguised imperial tribute on the Irish people — while at the same time Ireland should be weakened as an economic rival.

In fact, Ireland was exhausted and in a state of bankruptcy, when, in 1817, the two exchequers were amalgamated. Such was the result of a period when, under the one parliament, the two exchequers levied taxation in a decreed proportion. As a direct result of

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the Act of Union, Ireland had, by its machinery, for sixteen years been overcharged to the extent of 50 per cent., and at the time of amalgamation, the profit to England, therefore, was already over £50,000,000.

It was at this moment, when the proportional contribution had driven Ireland to insolvency, and had exhausted her ability to pay, that Ireland passed under a system whereby “future expense“ and “interest and charges on all joint debts” were to be “defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each country.” In theory, Ireland was saved from bankruptcy by her insolvency being merged in the Consolidated Debt, but the enforced obligations by which she had been driven into insolvency were perpetuated, and, in fact, increased, since the proportion of 2 to 15 was itself merged in an indiscriminate taxation. As it was stated before the Royal Commission: “It is true that she was extricated from bankruptcy, but, in the process of extrication, she derived no benefit that would be felt by the taxpayers. . . . Nothing short of an appreciable remission of her existing burdens could be any reparation for the past.” Whereas she continued to be taxed at the rate that had already exhausted her, that rate was no longer in any decreed proportion; she was carried away on the tide of English policies; and, in the merging of accounts, sight was lost of the further injury done to her as a separate economic entity.

For a time, however, Ireland received the “ particular exemptions and abatements” for which the

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Act provided. Her acknowledged poverty at the moment of amalgamation made necessary the benefit of this clause. Not all at once could the two taxations be equalised. Yet while, on the one hand, the rates of taxation were only slowly levelled up to the rates prevailing in England, on the other hand, Ireland received no benefit from the remission of taxes in England that amounted between the years 1817 to 1864 to an annual average of £16,000,000

It was not till 1853 that these exemptions and abatements were removed by a final assimilation. The hour was curiously chosen. Ireland lay stricken by famine, pestilence and emigration. England was gathering a world’s trade into her grasp, and framing her fiscal policy to that end. More than ever, Ireland required “exemptions and abatements,” under an enforced Act of Union. Yet, now, every tax levied by a wealthy country on itself as an imperial investment, was applied without exception to a country whose poverty and misery had lately roused a world’s pity. In 1800 a first sharp turn had been given to the rack-screw; in 1817, and at intervals during the ensuing years, further turns had been given; and now, between 1853 and 1860, the screw was racked to the full.

As the Commissioners reported: “the permanent taxation of Ireland may be said to have been raised during this period to the extent of about 2J millions per annum “ (on a taxation revenue of £4,290,000 in 1850). “It does not appear that there was anything in the circumstances of Ireland in the period 1853-60 which justified so large an increase.”

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Extremer language could be employed. For an increase of 50 per cent, falling on a people driven to such a depth of misery may well be described as a permanent disability. Every part of this increase went to England’s advantage. Of the taxation revenue from Ireland of over 7 millions for the financial year 1859-60, only two-sevenths was spent in Ireland (and a goodly share of that, be it remembered, on the instruments of oppression), while five-sevenths was retained by England as an imperial tribute. Such were the conditions that prevailed when, in 1894, ^he Financial Relations Commission reviewed the financial relations between the two nations since the beginning of the century. It came to certain noteworthy conclusions in a series of separate reports — conclusions so noteworthy that they have lain neglected since. As introductory to these, it provided a Short Report that contained the Commissioners* unanimous conclusions, which were: —

1. That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this enquiry, be considered as separate entities.

2. That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden, which, as events showed, she was unable to bear.
3. That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and i860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances.
4. That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden. [73]

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5. That whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great  Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth.

The first four of these conclusions have been illustrated in the practice of the empire. The fifth illustrates a further part of that practice. For, while a majority of the Commission thought that “the ratio of the taxable capacity of Ireland as contrasted with that of Great Britain cannot now be more than 1 to 20, and that it is possibly much less,” a minority gave reasons to show that “the true proportion of taxable capacity, on the principle of equal pressure on the means possessed by each country, apart form the necessaries of life,” was then “1 for Ireland to 36 for Great Britain, or about one-third of the proportion now contributed by Ireland, according to the Treasury computations.” This minority objected to the Treasury computations, giving particulars of its objections, and added further that:”  This proportion of 1 to 36 makes no allowance for the continual diminution of Irish relative capacity, owing to the steady and rapid progress of British wealth.”

During the twenty years that passed since their reports, to the outbreak of the world war, that steady and rapid progress of British wealth continued unabated, out of all proportion to the slight increase of Irish prosperity during the latter part of that time. Apart, therefore, from the fact that the ratio given by the minority was a truer estimate, in that it deducted the means of subsistence for each nation before

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 comparing their respective incomes, that ratio is seen to be enforced by the subsequent development of the two nations. Yet if the ratio given by the majority (with a manifest desire to be fully just to Great Britain) be taken, the difference between the one-twelfth that Ireland bore and the one-twenty-first that she should have borne, reveals an over-taxation of Ireland by England, in neglect of the provisions of the Act of Union, of some 3 millions a year. And if, setting aside all surpluses abstracted by England over her expenditure in Ireland, this be taken for the hundred years that elapsed between the amalgamation of the exchequers and the outbreak of war, it is seen that during that period Ireland has been overtaxed, in neglect of the Act of Union, some £300,000,000. If, however, allowance be made, as it is clear the majority wished allowance to be made, for a further disproportion since the time of their report, this over. taxation, on the lowest of the two ratios given by the Commission, amounts to between £300,000,000 and;j£350,000,000. Added to the £50,000,000 already discovered between the enforcement of the Act of Union and the amalgamation of the exchequers, this gives a total of between £350,000,000 and  £400,000,000.

This figure has been aptly called an “Empire’s Ransom.” Yet, it is found by taking the least favourable estimate given by a Royal Commission appointed by the English parliament. It may, therefore, be safely asserted that it is a minimum estimate of overtaxation between the Act of Union and the outbreak of war. It takes the lower of the two ratios. It neglects surpluses of revenue abstracted from Ireland over ex-

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penditure in Ireland that passed to the relief of imperial taxation, and it gives no heed to the injury such taxation alone caused Ireland during a critical century of development. Since the outbreak of the world-war in 1914, a further change is to be discovered. By 1914 expenditure in Ireland had, through various causes, mounted, and in the financial year then closing, it about balanced revenue. Since then the change has been rapid, as the following table will show: —

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This revenue represents taxation at England’s will. The expenditure also represents England’s will, and includes the maintenance in Ireland of a large standing army, kept as in an enemy country, and fully equipped with all modern appliances for war. In spite, however, of an expenditure incurred in great part for purposes of oppression, the balance remaining in England’s hands during the period of the war, from the taxation declared in the above table, amounts to some £50,000,000. Yet that is not all. There has been during the war a further taxation, and further equivalents of taxation, not declared in any separate figures available for Ireland. The English government bought in Ireland many commodities at controlled prices, and sold them at controlled prices, decreeing for herself a monopoly of business at those rates. For instance, it bought the whole of every harvest of wool at 3s. 9d. a pound, and sold it at 5s. a pound. The effect of this was as though it placed a tax on wool of 3s. 3d. a pound. Moreover, the government introduced a tax known as the Excess Profit Tax, and its conduct of the procedure under that tax was peculiar. For example, it controlled the price of coal, and the high prices it compelled coal owners to exact left a considerable margin of excess profits, of which it took 95 per cent., leaving coal owners the remaining 5 per cent, as their price for the collection of new government taxation. Its declared taxation on tea was a shilling a pound, but tea paid a further tax undeclared. For it compelled the sale of tea at 2s. 8d. a pound, though

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certain dealers publicly admitted that the same tea could be provided at 2S. a pound. Of that extra 8d. a pound the government took the larger share under its Excess Profits Tax, and, therefore, the real tax on tea, declared and undeclared, was not is. a pound but at least is. 6d. a pound, though that further amount does not appear in the above table. Every process of manufacture, and every exchange of commodities in sale, was submit[t]ed to examination in the search for Excess Profits, and in the result there has not been a single article of use that has not paid its tax, and many have paid several taxes, furtively levied at various stages of their manufacture and exchange.

There can be no question that the infinite range of this furtive taxation must have created a very large revenue from Ireland during the course of the war. Yet none of that revenue is displayed in the separate figures published for Ireland by the English government. By its nature, it presses more nearly on the life of the people than any other form of taxation. No part of any hour’s life escapes its mesh. It is, moreover, all new taxation, and, therefore, profitable for revenue. On the other hand, the taxation declared in the ordinary course was raised from a few articles, and was in nearly every case derived from increases of earlier taxes. Clearly, therefore, if such taxation, openly levied, yielded during the war a revenue increase of £50,000,000, all of that increase passing to surplus over expenditure, the yield of this new taxation, furtively levied on the whole range of all commodities, must be many times greater. That is to say, the surplus of revenue over taxation re-

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maining in England’s hands from her taxation of Ireland for the period of the war cannot be less than £ 1 00, 000,000, and may, indeed, prove to be many times that figure.

There is a further test for the same period. During the war England established many munition and war works among her own people. Virtually none such were established in Ireland. The wages paid to her own people rose out of all proportion to the same wages in Ireland. Consequently her people were easily able to meet the same scale of taxation that pressed more hardly on the Irish people. If, therefore, in 1896 a minority of Royal Commissioners considered that “ the true proportion of taxable capacity was I for Ireland to 36 for Great Britain, or about one-third of the proportion then contributed by Ireland,” manifestly that ratio may be taken as the minimum during the years of the war. On that ratio, however, omitting whatever taxation was levied furtively, Ireland, according to the Treasury computation, was overtaxed £80,000,000 during those years.

Therefore, whether the surplus of revenue over expenditure be taken, or the ratio of taxable capacity, the profit to the imperial exchequer from its over-taxation of Ireland during the period of the war amounts to a minimum of £100,000,000 to £1 50,000,000, though it is more probable that that figure falls very far short of the true total. Since the passing of the Act of Union, therefore, and in neglect of its provisions, under its operation the imperial government has abstracted from Ireland be

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tween £500,000,000 and £600,000,000 of over-taxation, estimating well within a larger and more probable figure.

Such is the debt that has accumulated since 1800 under an Act for which England must accept sole responsibility. That debt is accumulating each year. At the present scale of taxation, Ireland, out of her population of 4 millions, yields England an annual tribute some £15,000,000. It is sometimes objected by English publicists that Ireland receives for this sum the benefit of the protection of the English navy and army, and that, therefore, it is not wholly profit for England. This point was met before the Financial Relations Commission, in the examination to which the English treasury expert was submitted. It was met under two heads. Each is of importance. The first dealt with England’s interest in Ireland. Under the Act of Union Ireland became automatically charged with a share of England’s European wars. It was objected that Ireland should not so have been charged, and by question and answer the argument culminated thus: —

Q. — If Ireland had been taken by France because her poverty rendered her unable to make resistance, would not England have spent her last shilling in winning Ireland back?

A. — I presume so; certainly.

Q.— It appears then that the dominant interest was that of Great Britain ? A.— Yes, I admit that.

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 Q. — It does not appear then that a debt incurred in defending Ireland, as an exposed part of the British territory, could be in any measure reckoned as an Irish matter merely?

A. — No.

Q. — “Then I should think that as the only benefit Ireland has derived from a National Debt is the benefit of being held as a territory of Great Britain, with the results which we have stated, the advantages are at any rate open to argument?

A.— Yes.

This argument applies with even greater force to the late world war; for Ireland during that war endeavoured by an armed rising to break loose from England. Not only would England not have spent one penny less in her own interest had Ireland been free during the years of the war, but actually she spent Irish moneys in holding Ireland in bondage, and yet showed a profit to herself from the taxation she enforced in Ireland.

The second argument in the same course of examination dealt with certain items England charged under the head of Irish expenditure. She herself paid up to ij millions sterling in bribing the course of the Act of Union. That money was charged to Irish expenditure. She used her army of occupation in Ireland to break up meetings called by Sheriffs of Counties to protest against the proposed Union. That also was charged to Irish expenditure. During the course of the past century she has undertaken certain measures to relieve distress in Ireland, and these are sometimes spoken of as flowing from her

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benefaction. It is forgotten that the price of them is charged always to Irish expenditure, though they were occasioned by English oppression. And now the moneys she expends in holding Ireland in bondage against the expressed will of the Irish people is charged to Irish expenditure.

Therefore, the debt of £500,000,000 to £600,000,000 as a result of an admitted over-taxation is retained by England, not only as clear profit, in relief of her own population, but it neglects many items charged to Ireland’s accounts where they should have been charged to her own accounts, inasmuch as they were incurred at the will of her own people and against the will of the Irish people. She has supported her own economic and military interest in Ireland at the cost of the Irish people, and above and beyond this she has abstracted a vast ransom.

The degree of that ransom may best be seen by comparison. Germany has incurred great opprobrium because in 1871 she compelled from France, with her population of some 36 millions, a conqueror’s tribute of 400 millions sterling. The population of Ireland to-day is 4 millions. Yet from that small population England’s tribute to-day is 500 to 600 millions. And of that vast sum a third has been exacted during the past five years.

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VIL—Civil Liberty.

In 1885 Joseph Chamberlain stated that “The English system in Ireland is founded on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers, encamped permanently as in a hostile country.” He underestimated the number of soldiers, but, in order that Ireland should exist for the sole and particular advantage of England, that permanent encampment is necessary, though it is not in itself sufficient. It is not always clearly recognised what the permanent suppression of one people in the interest of another implies, for the 30,000 soldiers are the least part of the engines of suppression. There are evils worse in the life of a people than the naked use of force.

Early in the seventeenth century an English Attorney-General in Ireland, while concerned in the manipulation of documents by which the plantations were introduced, confessed: “There is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish.” Since his day there has not been in Ireland such a thing as equal and indifferent justice. For over three hundred years, since the dominion of England was enforced, Ireland has been without law, and her people have lived from generation to generation without any healing or corrective authority morally binding on their conscience. That they should still be, admittedly, a people conspicuously free from crime — holding in peculiar abhorrence the violences that rend the common fellowship — is a strange fact, for, from

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the highest courts of the land to the lowest, law is travestied before their eyes where it is not openly suborned for despotic ends.

Not a single judicial appointment is made but with a political intention, and politics in Ireland are the politics, not of parties, but of nations. Most charges to Grand Juries made by justices on circuit are open political orations, breathing flame and fury against the Irish nation. Even in equity, the least likely of cases will speedily turn into a bitter political wrangle. It goes without saying that Crown cases, instead of being, as among a free people they would be, the object of special watchfulness, are the scenes of careless license. From bench and from bar the politician speaks, and it is even difficult to brief defending counsel, for legal advancement lies at the will of England, and wise men avoid that will unless they are content to serve it.

Such cases are conducted by a formality known as Trial by Jury. It is presumed in English law that none may be convicted except by the judgment of his peers. But in Ireland his peers are his own nationals, joined for the most part in the one war with him against the opposing nationals who brandish their emblems from bench or bar, or who, when they are of his own nation, are suborned by office against him in the constant war. This does not mean that the formality is neglected. It is, in fact, most faithfully preserved. There is a device invented for its preservation known as Jury-Packing. By this device a jury is carefully selected to return the required sentence. And if in any locality such a jury

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proves hard to discover, by a provision of the English parliament, to be enforced only in Ireland, the Crown may demand a change of venue. That is to say, they may remove their case to some other part of the country where juries can more easily be packed.

Thus convictions are ensured, under all the forms by which justice is held to be protected. Yet, by the constant admission of judges appointed for their political ill-will against the Irish people, the country continues in a practically crimeless state. During two years of intense emotion, 1917-18, the respect in which the people held the common law (deriving not from despotism, but from right), won many such testimonies. In 1917 the Lord Chief Justice stated in Co. Meath:

— It was gratifying to him on this first occasion as one of his Majesty’s judges going on Assize, to congratulate them on the peaceful state of the county. There were only two cases to go before the Grand Jury.

Another judge stated in Limerick City: —

He was informed by the authorities of the city’s absolute freedom from what was called ordinary crime.

In 1918 the Judge of Assize stated in Waterford City:—

There was actually no return of any crime in connection with the city. It was a very gratifying circumstance, because one would expect in a city such as that, that crimes aggravated, or

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less aggravated, would take place.

It was a great credit to the people. In Co. Fermanagh the Judge of Assize stated: —

From the returns and information laid before him he found there was nothing to suggest that the country was in anything but a satisfactory condition.

During 1917 at least 22 such testimonials were given. During 1918 at least 19 such testimonials were given. They came indifferently from all parts of the country, from cities and from counties alike.

Yet for the same years the following record of arrests, sentences, imprisonments (with or without trial), deportations, and killing by official violence has been compiled from the ordinary press, though for the whole time this press has been under the constant surveillance of the Military Censor: —

This record even does not enquire into the violence necessary for its enforcement. In many cases arrests and the suppression of meetings necessitate brutal injuries, inflicted both on women and children, as on men, as the result of baton and bayonet charges. It does not distinguish the sexes, for the arrests include many women and girls. It does not include the seizing of children of 1 1 and 13 years of age, and their retention in solitary confinement, not for any offence, but in order that by terror they may be induced to make such statements as would cause the arrests of their friends. Nor does it heed the continual brutalities of a semi-military constabulary, secure in the knowledge that all their acts will be condoned by Government.

Such a record for a country admittedly without crime is an exposition in civilisation. The record of the year previous, 1916, is yet more eloquent. Over forty thousand soldiers, fully equipped, were thrown upon twelve hundred men and women who rose for their nation’s freedom.

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and, after seven days’ continual battle, succeeded in overcoming them, but not till the centre of the city of Dublin was burnt to the ground by incendiary shells. Fifteen men were shot by order of Field Courts Martial without being heard in their own defence, and on evidence that dare not be revealed lest it be shown that, even on such summary procedure, they were judicially murdered. Outside and within the sphere of battle private citizens were shot by subordinate officers, and these officers were protected by the English government. Over 150 were sentenced to penal servitude, many for life, many without being heard in their own defence. Others, both men and women, were seized in all parts of the country, and thrown into jail without trial. There many were brutally treated, being in some cases thrown on the floor and kicked about the head till they were unconscious, and their experiences are on record. In one case thirteen men were placed in a small cell not adequate for the provision of one, and not permitted to emerge from that cell for three days and nights for any purpose whatever, sanitary or otherwise. In another case two men and women were placed in a guard-room for two days and one night under the same conditions. Over four thousand were kept in jail or confinement for the rest of that year without any charge being brought against them, and these included women as well as men. They were detained under a regulation ordained for “Enemy Aliens,” and were officially defined as”  Prisoners of War,” and thus the country of which they were citizens was recognised as a country with which England was at. war.

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The history of the previous century, since the passing of the Act of Union, is not less eloquent. During all that time, though Ireland was presumed to live under the one united law with England, the ordinary operation of that law only obtained for 15 of the 116 years. Under one name or another the English parliament spent the century suspending law and substituting coercion in Ireland. Whatever the term used, the result was the displacement of any attempt to find justice by the use of naked force. The following table will display the course of this: —

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This last was passed by Mr. Arthur Balfour, who, perceiving the futility and inconvenient notoriety of continually drafting new forms to give coercion shape, devised an act that would be perpetual. It was much simpler, though for Judges of Assize to testify to the lack of crime among a people living under a Perpetual Crimes Act might also prove ironic. Yet the distinction is real. The crimes to which they have referred, they have exactly defined as “ordinary crime.” The crimes to which the Perpetual Act refers are by contrast “extra-ordinary crime,” that is to say, acts which in other countries are ac[c]ounted good citizenship, by English Act of Parliament declared to be crimes in Ireland.

Known in Ireland as the Jubilee Act, that Act is now in full force. It is used as a supplementary to Courts Martial, which under Martial Law are the usual form of trial. In 1917 thirty-six Courts Martial were held. In 1918 sixty-two Courts Martial were held. They sit to apportion sentences to all manner of political offenders. Composed of army officers without legal experience or knowledge, but with a very energetic sense of what is expected of them, little is left to chance, and few of their victims escape heavy sentences. They have publicly declared their procedure. It is, that prisoners step before them guilty, and are under necessity of establishing their innocence. Inasmuch as this puts in clear words what lies implicit in all other courts, it is so much a gain in honesty.

All Ireland is now a military area, proclaimed as such, and many parts of Ireland are specially pro-

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claimed military areas. In these special areas, public markets and fairs are forbidden, they are ringed round with barbed wire defences, and fully armed soldiers constantly parade the streets. In 1831 the Marquis of Anglesey, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, wrote: “It is idle and absurd to shut your eyes to the degrading fact. We have positively nothing to look to but the army.” The degradation he felt is now not perceived, but is a matter of public boast.

Yet these are not the only defences of Ireland against her own population. If the English army be the grand reserve, it is not the first defence. In front of the army stands a semi-military constabulary. Before the Financial Relations Commission it was shown that on the moneys charged against Ireland for the maintenance of this constabulary, Sweden maintained her army and her navy. In intimate connection with this constabulary, the local courts in Ireland are administered by a removable stipendiary magistracy. It is quite usual for promotions to occur from the constabulary to the magistracy, and both branches of the service are loyal to one another. In front of the constabulary again is the secret service, the members of which frequent all public, and many private, places, and act as spies for the forces behind them. The cost of this branch of the service has never been disclosed. It dare not be disclosed. It would prove to be the costliest secret service, and the most widely spread, ever employed by any government. Such are the instruments by which Ireland is held in suppression. There is no law in Ireland save such

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as her people recognise among themselves. There is no justice, and no Irishman steps into any court in the expectation of justice. The legal procedure of the public courts, which in other countries is conceived of as at least an effort towards equity, and by which it is expected that justice will be administered, if not always in effect at least in intention, in Ireland is a theme of hatred and derision. The reason is simple. Where there is no Right there can be no Law. Where there is no public consent there can be no administration of justice. A system founded on the denial of Right and the defiance of public consent is a system that is founded on bayonets. In an eloquent moment the present English Premier cried out: “Conquest, unless it is a conquest of the heart and a conquest of the conscience, is a conquest that will terminate and rot and decay, and it ought to.” Not only it ought to: it does. Therefore, it supplements itself with that with which it began: Force. Only by Coercion, in one form or another, can England hold for herself that economic gain which is the chief cause and reason of her presence in Ireland. Her law is the law of the buccaneer.

[End]