Great Britain through
the channel of absenteeism.

Averaging the figures of the taxation-tribute in similar fashion, and
taking the lowest estimates, I am unable to reach a less total than
L120,000,000 for the same period. In other words, the effect of the
Union was to withdraw from Ireland during the thirty years that settled
the economic structure of modern industry not less than _L_225,000,000.
Let me draw the argument together in words which I have used elsewhere,
and which others can no doubt easily better:

"We have heard, in our day, a long-drawn denunciation of a Liberal
government on the score that it had, by predatory taxation, driven
English capital out of the country, and compromised the industrial
future of England. We have seen in our own day gilt-edged
securities, bank, insurance, railway, and brewery shares in Great
Britain, brought toppling down by a Tory waste of _L_250,000,000 on
the Boer War. We know that in economic history effects are, in a
notable way, cumulative; so clearly marked is the line of
continuity as to lead a great writer to declare that there is not a
nail in all England that could not be traced back to savings made
before the Norman Conquest. A hundred instances admonish us that,
in industrial life, nothing fails like failure. When we put all
these considerations together, and give them a concrete
application, can we doubt that in over-taxation and the withdrawal
of capital we have the prime _causa causans_ of the decay of
Ireland under the Union?"

In this wise did Pitt "blend Ireland with the industry and capital of
Great Britain." Cupped by his finance she gave the venal blood of her
industry to strengthen the predominant partner, and to help him to
exclude for a time from these islands that pernicious French Democracy
in which all states and peoples have since found redemption. Such was
the first chapter in the Economics of Unionism.

CHAPTER VI

THE RAVAGES OF UNIONISM (2)

If the reader cares to push forward the line of thought suggested in the
preceding pages and to submit it to a concrete test he can do so without
difficulty. He has but to compare the post-Union history of linen with
that of cotton. Linen in Ireland had been a perfect type of the
State-created, spoon-fed industry characteristic of the period of
mercantilism. Within certain limits--such as the steady resolve to
confi