my," he added, "would mean
disintegration of the United Kingdom. Fiscal autonomy for Ireland put
an end altogether to all talk of Federal Home Rule, and he could see no
hope for a Home Rule Bill if it included fiscal autonomy."[23]

Although the Secretary to the Board of Trade was probably not in the
confidence of the Cabinet, many people took Mr. Robertson's speech as an
indication of the limits of financial control that the Bill would give
to Ireland. On the same day that it was delivered the Dublin
Correspondent of _The Times_ reported that the demand of the
Nationalists for control of Customs and Excise was rapidly growing, and
that any Bill which withheld it, even if it could scrape through a
National Convention, "would never survive the two succeeding years of
agitation and criticism"; and he agreed with Mr. Robertson that if, on
the other hand, fiscal autonomy should be conceded, it would destroy all
prospect of a settlement on federal lines, and would "establish virtual
separation between Ireland and Great Britain." He predicted that
"Ulster, of course, would resist to the bitter end."[24]

Ulster, in point of fact, took but a secondary interest in the question.
Her people were indeed opposed to anything that would enlarge the
separation from England, or emphasise it, and, as they realised, like
the Secretary to the Board of Trade, that fiscal autonomy would have
this effect, they opposed fiscal autonomy; but they cared little about
the thing in itself one way or the other. Nor did they greatly concern
themselves whether Home Rule proceeded on federal lines or any other
lines; nor whether some apt analogy could or could not be found between
Ireland and the Dominions of the Crown thousands of miles oversea.
Having made up their minds that no Dublin Parliament should exercise
jurisdiction over themselves, they did not worry themselves much about
the powers with which such a Parliament might be endowed. It is
noteworthy, however, in view of the importance which the question
afterwards attained, that so early as January 1912 Sir Edward Carson,
speaking in Manchester, maintained that without fiscal autonomy Home
Rule was impossible,[25] and that some months later Mr. Bonar Law, in a
speech at Glasgow on the 21st of May, said that if the Unionist Party
were in a position where they had to concede Home Rule to Ireland they
would include fiscal autonomy in the grant.[26] These leaders, who,
unlike the Liberal Ministers