As to the danger to Great Britain of separate Irish Customs, it seems to me to be greatly exaggerated.  Ireland’s own interests will primarily dictate her action.  What she will decide her interest to be, nobody can foretell with certainty beyond a limited point, because Irish public opinion is not formed.  Ireland has taken little or no part in the fiscal controversy, for the simple reason that she has been absorbed in the task of getting Home Rule, and until she gets it she is precluded from formulating a trustworthy national opinion on most of the great subjects which agitate modern societies.  There is, however, no tradition in favour of high Protection, even from Grattan’s commercially free Parliament.  The question of a low protective or purely revenue tariff on imports has not received any serious investigation.  Let us frankly admit at the outset that no country in the world, economically situated as Ireland is, dispenses with a general tariff of some sort, and undoubtedly there are to-day a good many Irishmen outside political life who advocate the encouragement of infant Irish manufacturing industries by sufficient protective duties directed against Great Britain as well as against the outside world.  It would be strange if there were not, in view of the distressing past history of Ireland’s throttled industries, and in view of the strenuous efforts now being made by the Development Associations to push the manufacture and sale of Irish goods in all parts of the world.  There are many avowed Free Traders also; nor are the Development Associations themselves officially protectionist.  The opinion is sometimes expressed that Ireland, which could easily be self-supporting in the matter of food, occupies an unhealthy position in exporting a large proportion of her own agricultural produce, butter, bacon, meat, etc., and in importing for her own consumption inferior British and foreign qualities of some of the principal foodstuffs; but, so far as it is possible to ascertain it, the predominant opinion seems to be that an agricultural tariff would not be a good remedy for this weakness, if it be one, and that Ireland’s future development, like that of Denmark, lies in the increasingly scientific organization of her agricultural industries, and in the better cultivation of her own soil.  “Better farming, better business, better living,” to use the admirable motto invented by Sir Horace Plunkett for the I.A.O.S.  In the absence of an Irish Legislature, no special importance can be attached to individual expressions of opinion.  Yet a measure of prophecy is permissible.  The Irish Legislature will have to study the national interest, and it is possible to say with certainty at least this—­that Ireland’s interest lies in maintaining close and friendly trade relations with Great Britain.  Unfortunately, we have no means of accurately ascertaining the amount of trade done by Ireland with Great Britain and with foreign and colonial countries respectively.  Irish commerce