it is the linen industry of the North. It would have
no attraction for the shipbuilding industry, which in no part of the
British Isles has anything to gain by Protection, as I believe all
parties to the controversy agree. Other small manufacturing industries
would complain that they gained nothing; while the agricultural
population would complain that, as consumers, they would be damaged by
higher prices for clothing and other manufactured articles, while as
producers they were ignored.

The difficulty is only one further proof of the dissimilarity of
economic conditions between Great Britain and Ireland, and of the
artificial and unnatural character of the present fiscal union. Justice
to Ireland demands its dissolution. The dangers are imaginary. Liberals,
however firm their belief in Free Trade, should hold, with Lord Welby
and his Home Rule colleagues on the Financial Relations Commission, that
"even if Ireland initiates a protective policy, in this case, as in that
of the Colonies, freedom is a greater good than Free Trade." As for the
Protectionists, I have never seen an argument from that source, and I do
not see how any consistent or plausible argument could possibly be
framed, to show that a uniform tariff for the United Kingdom could be
fair to Ireland. Professor Hewins, the leading Tariff Reform economist,
virtually acknowledges the impossibility in his Introduction to Miss
Murray's "Commercial Relations between England and Ireland." There were
two sound lines of policy, he points out, which might have been adopted
towards Ireland in the period prior to the Union: (1)To have placed her
on a level of equality with the Colonies, applying the mercantile
system indiscriminately and impartially to the Colonies and to her; or
(2) to have aimed from the first at the financial and commercial unity
of the British Isles. Neither of these courses was taken. Ireland, while
kept financially and commercially separate, "was in a less favourable
position than that of a Colony." With regard to the present, "Most of
the difficulties of an economic character," says the Professor, "in the
financial relations between England and Ireland, arise from the
differences of economic structure and organization between the two
countries. If Ireland were a highly organized, populous, manufacturing
country, the present fiscal system would probably work out no worse than
it does in the urban districts of Great Britain. But whatever be the
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