rish
tariff to overcome, might not be very great. The real loss would be not
so much any actual decrease of trade, as the loss judged by the
standard of the possibilities of Irish development under the Union. The
essence of the situation after all is that the United Kingdom is a
single economic area. The exclusion of one part of that area from the
political and economic life of the rest, while injurious to the rest,
must prove disastrous above all to the part excluded. After centuries of
alternate neglect and repression Ireland has at last been brought to a
condition in which she is capable of taking the fullest advantage of a
new era of progress and development for the United Kingdom as a whole.
And this is the time which is chosen for seriously suggesting that she
should once again be excluded from all the benefits of partnership in
the United Kingdom and driven out into the wilderness of poverty and
decay. The plea for this folly is an unreal sentiment which is itself
merely the survival of the mistaken political or economic separatism of
the past, and which is nothing to the real and justifiable sentiment of
bitterness which would be roused in Ireland if the plea were accepted.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 86: This fear itself was the result of separatism. Miss A. E.
Murray, in her work on "The Commercial Relations between England and
Ireland" (p. 51), points out: "It was not so much jealousy of Ireland as
jealousy and fear of the English Crown which influenced the English
legislature. Experience seemed to show that Irish prosperity was
dangerous to English liberty.... The difficulty was that Ireland was a
separate kingdom, and that the English Parliament had no direct
authority over her. It was this absence of direct authority which made
England so nervously anxious to restrict Irish resources in all those
directions in which they might even indirectly interfere with the growth
of English power."]

[Footnote 87: For details, see Miss Murray's "Commercial Relations
between England and Ireland."]

[Footnote 88: It is worth noting that in 1893 the Liberal Government
rejected amendments moved by Mr. Whiteley to prevent existing laws for
the protection of workers in factories, workshops, and mines, being
repealed by the proposed Irish Legislature, and by Sir J. Gorst to
reserve laws affecting the hours and conditions of labour to the United
Kingdom Parliament.]

XVII

PRIVATE BILL LEGISLATION

BY THE RIGHT HON