other articles, Great Britain has
the benefit of a near food supply within the United Kingdom. Nor does
any one doubt that this trade is capable of enormous increase. The
improvement of Irish agricultural methods, the growth in England of a
town population, the increased price of the necessaries of life, are
some of the factors pointing in this direction.

If this trade is to expand, Irish traffic routes and facilities with
Great Britain must be improved and increased, especially as the articles
carried are largely of a perishable kind. Moreover, the internal traffic
of Ireland, by rail, waterways, and canals is capable of and needs great
development, as witness the recent Reports of the Viceregal Commission
on Irish Railways, and of the Royal Commission on Canals and
Waterways.[92] The problem of inland navigation is again intimately
bound up with that of arterial drainage, as the Commissioners have
reported. It is then strange to find, that on these pressing questions
of first importance, there is an almost absolute silence on the part of
those who advocate Home Rule in and out of Parliament.

SOLUTION OF TRANSIT PROBLEM IMPOSSIBLE UNDER HOME RULE.

It is true that the nationalisation of the Irish railways has in past
years found the keenest advocates amongst individual members of the Home
Rule Party; that the Majority Report of the late Viceregal Commission
favouring State purchase of the Irish railways was formally approved of
by the Parliamentary Party, and that Mr. Redmond has named "transit" as
one of the special matters that should be left to be dealt with by an
Irish Legislature. But there the matter ends. We are not given the
slightest inkling what is proposed to be done on this matter, or how it
will be done, or the slightest proof that under any system of Home Rule,
the financial difficulties of the problem can be solved at all.

The Reports of both the Commissions referred to are based, first on the
continuance of the present system of laws and government, and secondly,
on the use of Imperial credit to the tune of many millions. Yet amongst
the shoals of literature on Home Rule problems and finance, I can find
no enlightenment as to how the transit problem is to be solved under the
new conditions; _i.e._ how any Home Rule Government, whether it has
control of Customs and Excise or not, and however it economises, is to
find the money necessary to buy out the Irish railways and canals. A
Government that