Every word of Lord Welby’s and Lord Farrer’s condemnation was justified by events; every prophecy they made has been fulfilled.  And the worst of it is that the delay has damaged the prospects of Home Rule.  The habit of dissociating income from revenue becomes inveterate.  The habit of nursing an old grievance and of expecting “restitution” for funds unwarrantably levied in the past is hard to shake off.  Restitution has gone too far already.  Perpetuated, it would ruin Ireland.  Home Rulers worth their salt must leave this cry to those Unionists who descend to use it; but it is surely amazing that any Irishman, least of all those who claim to represent the wealth and intelligence of the country, should tolerate a political system which inexorably involves a fiscal system so humiliating to Ireland.  Until three years ago it could easily have been put an end to without affecting the independent solvency of Ireland, even on the basis of an enormously swollen civil expenditure, and with the inclusion of services strictly Imperial in origin and character.  Now it is a different matter, and we are faced with the opposition of British statesmen who, by sustaining the Union, drove Ireland to the verge of insolvency, and now use insolvency as an argument against Home Rule.

One respects the clean and honest side of Unionism, but there can be nothing but reprobation for the meanness of this latter-day argument.  For generations Ireland herself has asked to be free both from coercion and bribes, sanely conscious in her soul that both are equally demoralizing.  The aim—­though in the past not generally the conscious aim—­of Unionism was to sap the moral fibre of Ireland now by one means, now by the other.  At last the aim is avowed, so that men who applauded Mr. Chamberlain in 1893 for sneering at Irish patriotism as a “sickly plant which needed to be watered by British gold” merely because her contribution under the Home Rule Bill was to be small are now urging Ireland to maintain the Union—­in Mr. Walter Long’s words—­for its “eleemosynary benefits."[114] Ireland herself must and will rise to a higher moral level than that, when she is fully awake to the gravity of the situation.  Those who love her most will not lose a minute in explaining that situation.  Too much time already has been lost.

FOOTNOTES: 

[97] The Treasury Returns of 1869, “Public Income and Expenditure,” in two volumes, are the basis of all information up to that date.

[98] Mr. Secretary Pelham in this year estimated that Ireland, though contributing nothing in money to the Navy, had furnished no less than 38,000 men to the Navy since the beginning of the war.

[99] Pre-Union Debts were to be separate.  Post-Union Debt contracted for Imperial services was to be regarded as joint, and its charge was to be borne by the two countries in the proportions of their respective contributions (see below); but post-Union Debt contracted by Ireland for domestic services was to be kept separate.