The same observation applies to all future land legislation, not excepting Land Purchase, which I deal with fully in a later chapter.[64] That great department of administration must, for financial reasons, be worked in harmonious consultation with the British Government; but it ought to be controlled by Ireland, and a free and normal outlet given to criticisms like those emanating from Mr. William O’Brien, whatever the intrinsic value of these criticisms.  Purchase itself settles nothing beyond the bare ownership of the land.  It leaves the distribution and use of the land, except in the “resettled” districts, where it was, with a third or a quarter of the holdings so small as to be classed as “uneconomic.”  Ireland is not as yet awake to the possibilities of the silent revolution proceeding from the erection of a small peasant proprietorship.  The sense of responsibility in these new proprietors will be quickened and the interests of the whole country forwarded by a National Parliament.

Temperance will never be tackled thoroughly but by an Irish Parliament.  All Irishmen are ashamed in their hearts of the encouragement given to drunkenness by the still grossly excessive number of licensed houses, which in 1909 was 22,591, and of the National Drink Bill, which in the same year was L13,310,469,[65] or L3 11d. per head of a population not rich in this world’s goods.  Temperance is not really a party or a sectarian question.  All the Churches make noble efforts to forward reform, and in a rationally governed Ireland reform would be considered on its merits.  At present it is inextricably mixed up with Nationalist and anti-Nationalist politics, and with irrelevant questions of Imperial taxation.

The latest examples of the embarrassment into which Ireland without Home Rule is liable to drift from the absence of a formed public opinion and the means to give it effect, are the labour troubles and the National Insurance scheme.  There are signs that English labour is thrusting forward Irish labour in advance of its own will and in advance of general Irish opinion.  In all labour questions Ireland’s position as an agricultural country is totally different from that of Great Britain.  The same legislation cannot be applicable to both.  Ireland should frame her own.  Under present conditions it is impossible to know the considered judgment of Ireland.  There is certainly much opposition to Insurance, and if all Irishmen thoroughly realized that the scheme might complicate the finance of Home Rule and involve a greater financial dependence on Great Britain than exists even at present, they would study it with still more critical eyes,[66] as they would certainly have studied the Old Age Pensions scheme with more critical eyes.

Here I am led naturally to the great and all-embracing questions of Irish finance and expenditure, which lie behind all the topics already discussed and many others.  The subject is far too important and interwoven with history to be dealt with otherwise than as an historical whole, and that course I propose to take in a later part of the book.  It is enough to say that all the arguments for Home Rule are summed up in the fiscal argument.  Every Irishman worth his salt ought to be ashamed and indignant at the present position.