.]

[Footnote 84: Ibid., vol. 175, p. 1088.]

[Footnote 85: Ibid., May 31, 1903.]

XVI

THE ECONOMICS OF SEPARATISM

BY L. S. AMERY, M.P.

The history of Ireland for the last two centuries and more is a
continuous exposition of the disastrous consequences of political and
economic separatism within an area where every natural condition, and
the whole course of historical development, pointed to political and
economic union. Geographically, racially and historically an integral
part of a single homogeneous island group, Ireland has never really been
allowed to enjoy the full advantages of political and economic union
with the adjoining main island. Almost every misfortune which Ireland
has suffered is directly traceable to this cause. In spite of this, it
is now seriously proposed to subject her once again to the disadvantages
of political separation, and that on the very eve of an inevitable
change of economic policy, which, while it would restore real vitality
and purpose to political union, would also once more intensify all the
injury which economic disunion has inflicted upon Ireland in the past.

In the long constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century her
position as a separate political unit made Ireland a convenient
instrument of Stuart policy against the English Parliament. Cromwell,
with true insight, solved the difficulty by legislative union with
England. But his work was undone at the Restoration, and for another 122
years Ireland remained outside the Union as a separate and subordinate
state. Her economic position was that of a Colony, as Colonies were then
administered. But it was that of a "least favoured Colony." This was
due, in part, to a real fear of Ireland as a danger to British
constitutional liberty and British Protestantism[86] which long
survived the occasion which has seemed to justify it. But what was a
more serious and permanent factor was the circumstance that Ireland's
economic development could only be on lines which competed with England,
and not like Colonial development on lines complementary to English
trade. One after another Irish industries were penalised and crippled by
being forbidden all part in the export trade. A flourishing woollen
industry, a prosperous shipping, promising cotton, silk, glass, glove
making and sugar refining industries were all ruthlessly repressed,[87]
not from any innate perversity on the part of English statesmen, or from
any delibe