ty for joint
Customs between Ireland and Great Britain. The presumption raised by all
subsequent events is in the opposite direction.

But the tradition of unified Customs, now nearly a century old, has
immense potency, and unless it is fearlessly scrutinized and challenged,
may be able, reinforced by the passions excited by the great controversy
over Free Trade and Protection, to defy the warnings writ large upon the
page of history. The tradition must be so challenged. Say what we will
about the proximity of Ireland and Great Britain, descant as we will in
law-books, pamphlets, leading articles, debates, on what ought
theoretically to be the fiscal relations of the two countries, we cannot
escape from the fact that, in this as in so many other respects, both
the human and economic problem before us is fundamentally a colonial
problem, and that its being so is not the fault of Ireland, but of Great
Britain.

Belief in Home Rule seems to me necessarily to involve a willingness to
give Ireland her Customs. Great Britain has no moral right to lay it
down that her views about trade shall govern the course of Irish policy;
and if Great Britain believes sincerely in Home Rule, she should be
willing to trust Ireland, regardless of the economic consequences, and
regardless of the effect upon the great Tariff controversy.

The effect upon that controversy I shall not discuss. It seems to me to
possess only a tactical and electioneering interest, and that side of
the Home Rule problem I have rigidly avoided, while expressing in
general terms my belief that sound policy and sound tactics in reality
coincide. The Home Rule Bill is far more likely to be wrecked by
timidity than by boldness, by precautions and compromises than by a
fearless accommodation of British policy to Irish facts and needs.

As to the danger to Great Britain of separate Irish Customs, it seems
to me to be greatly exaggerated. Ireland's own interests will primarily
dictate her action. What she will decide her interest to be, nobody can
foretell with certainty beyond a limited point, because Irish public
opinion is not formed. Ireland has taken little or no part in the fiscal
controversy, for the simple reason that she has been absorbed in the
task of getting Home Rule, and until she gets it she is precluded from
formulating a trustworthy national opinion on most of the great subjects
which agitate modern societies. There is, however, no tradition in
favour