ies in the North in
whatever way may seem best. The Industrial Development Associations,
which are affiliated in a national organization, and are far above petty
sectarian jealousies, may be trusted to see that Ireland steers a safe
financial course in her trade policy.

If there is little or no danger that a Home-Ruled Ireland will commit
tariff follies of her own, she has unquestionably a right to escape from
further entanglement in the tariff policy of Great Britain. What may be
the issue of Great Britain's great fiscal controversy nobody can
foretell. But as long as a protective tariff remains the cardinal point
in the constructive policy of one of the British parties, there is a
strong likelihood of such a tariff, which would be uniform for the whole
United Kingdom, being carried into law. Free Traders, like myself, may
deplore the possibility, but we cannot shut our eyes to it. That tariff,
if and when it is framed, will, like the Free Trade tariff of the past,
be framed without regard to Irish interests, which are predominantly
agricultural, and with exclusive regard to British interests, which are
mainly industrial. Whatever may have been the original ideal of the
Conservative Protectionists, however highly they may once have valued
the protection of agriculture, irresistible political forces have driven
them in the direction of a tariff framed mainly to secure the adhesion
of the great manufacturing towns. The electoral power of these towns,
the growing resentment of the working classes in most parts of the world
at the increasing cost of living, the fact that Great Britain cannot
under any conceivable circumstances feed her own population, have been
reflected in the definite abandonment by the party leaders of the
proposed small duty against colonial imports, and in the admission by
Mr. Bonar Law at Manchester, during the last General Election, that the
proposed tariff would not benefit the farmers. Nor will the failure of
the Reciprocity Agreement between Canada and the United States
appreciably diminish the obstacles to food-taxes in the United Kingdom.
Any practicable protective tariff, therefore, on the ground of its
injustice to Ireland, would cause strong and legitimate resentment in
that country, which is subjected to the most formidable competition from
foreign and colonial foodstuffs, but whose great competition in
manufactured goods is Great Britain herself. The one Irish industry
which might favour