enue should be raised by a
duty on spirits. This course Belfast had been permitted to follow--one
of the numberless make-weights thrown into the scale so steadily on the
side of the Protestant North. In my part of the country the people used
to say of any very expert thief: "Why, he'd steal the fire out of your
grate." Under the Union arrangements Great Britain stole the fire out of
the grate of Ireland. And having so dealt with capital and coal the
predominant partner next proceeded by a logical development to muddle
transportation.

The Drummond Commission, appointed in 1836 to consider the question of
railway construction in Ireland, issued a report in 1838 which
practically recommended public and not private enterprise as appropriate
"to accomplish so important a national object." What came after is best
related in the official terminology of the Scotter Commission of
1906-10:

"This report was presented in July 1838, and early in the
following year a great public meeting, held in Dublin, passed a
resolution that inasmuch as an adequate system of railways could
not be constructed by private capital, the Government should be
urged to take the work into its own hands, thereby saving the cost
of Private Bill legislation. Promises were also made that the lands
necessary for railway construction would be given free of cost.
Similar resolutions were adopted at another meeting held about the
same time in the north of Ireland. In addition, an address to the
Queen was presented by a number of Irish Peers, headed by the Duke
of Leinster, praying that action might be taken on the Drummond
Commission Report."

The government saw the light, and proceeded to sin against it. They
embodied the Dublin programme in resolutions which were adopted by the
House of Commons in March 1839, and they then abruptly abandoned the
whole business. The last chance was not yet lost. During the Great
Famine of 1847 the Opposition proposed to raise, L16,000,000 by State
loans for the construction of railways as relief works. A suggestion so
sane could not hope to pass. It was in fact rejected; the starving
peasants were set to dig large holes and fill them up again, and to
build bad roads leading nowhere. And instead of a national railway
system Ireland was given private enterprise with all its waste and all
its clash of interests.

The two most conspicuous gifts of Unionism to Ireland