Now, a fundamental condition of commercial and industrial well-being is financial confidence.  If the Public Exchequer of a country lacks confidence, it is a truism to say that consequently commercial confidence must be gravely impaired.  The magnates of Lombard Street and Wall Street would view their Irish clients with unpleasant reserve.  Irish bankers would in turn restrict advances to their customers, and these again would limit the credit of those with whom they transacted business.  Curtailment of industrial enterprise, the shutting down of many manufacturing concerns, with consequent depreciation of buildings and plant, as well as increase of unemployment, would follow.  Already, since the present Home Rule crisis has become acute, the handwriting on the wall has been made evident in the depreciation of leading Irish stocks to the extent of 15 to 20 per cent.  Every one in trade would suffer from the diminution of purchasing power, capital would shrink, income and wages decrease, and the incentives to emigration, which is already depriving our population of some of its most hopeful elements, would be dangerously increased.

All these tendencies would be stimulated by the social disorganisation which would certainly follow Home Rule.  Unionist Ulster, from the Ulster Convention of 1892, to the Craigavon demonstration of 1911, has been consistent in her loyal determination that no Parliament but the Imperial Parliament shall control her destinies.  It is an ignorant mistake to say that she is weakening in this resolve.  The steadily increasing Unionist majorities in contested Ulster seats at both elections in 1910 conclusively prove that she is more staunch than ever in her Unionist faith.  She would certainly resist the decrees of a Dublin Parliament and refuse to pay its taxes.  The result of its passive resistance would be civil disorder, which would certainly gravely injure her industrial welfare, especially that of her artisan and working population.  But Ulstermen ask, What is industrial prosperity without freedom?  And if, in defence of freedom, they should suffer disaster, the responsibility would lie with their fellow-citizens in Great Britain who would impose a hostile yoke upon them.

Under Home Rule, agricultural Ulster would also suffer.  Very many Ulster farmers are now occupying owners.  But a large number have not yet succeeded in purchasing, and these eagerly desire the privilege of doing so.  Mr. Birrell’s 1909 Act has already practically strangled further land purchase in Ireland, and if he intends that its completion should be the work of a Home Rule Parliament, the Ulster tenants ask where would the L75,000,000 to L100,000,000 necessary to accomplish the process, come from?[66] They know that the procuring of such a sum from an Irish Government would be hopeless, for they are aware that Englishmen have better judgment than to allow their Parliament to lend further money to a country over which they