without a common government to frame it.  If Free Trade, indeed, were to be maintained in England, fiscal separation would be no disadvantage to Ireland.  On the contrary, she would continue to enjoy the same access to the British market while giving her own industries such protection as might be convenient.  It is one of the glaring weaknesses of the policy of Free Imports that it actually puts a premium on separatism.  But it is impossible to discuss the future on that assumption.  Whatever the fate of the Home Rule Bill may be it is certain that Free Trade is doomed, and that the United Kingdom, whether united or divided, will revert to a policy of national protection and national development.

What will be the effect upon Ireland?  Assuming mutual good will, assuming that the Irish Government will be ready to grant a substantial preference to British trade over foreign trade, there can be no doubt that Great Britain would respond and give to Irish products the same preference as might be extended to Canadian or Australian products.  But the first duty of the British Government would be to British producers.  While Empire-grown wheat, and possibly meat, would come in free, the British farmer would receive a measure of protection against the rest of the Empire in dairy products and poultry, in barley and oats, in hops, tobacco, sugar beet, vegetables and fruit, in all those crops, in fact, in which the British production could meet the British demand without an undue effect upon prices.

Now, it is precisely by these intensive forms of production that Ireland stands to gain most under Union.  Under Home Rule she would lose this advantage and have to compete on an equality with the rest of the Empire both in respect to these products and in respect to wheat and meat.  It is extremely doubtful, too, whether her special privileges with regard to store cattle would long survive.  They could no longer be defended, as against Canada, by the arguments now used, and as a piece of pure protectionism there would be no reason for Great Britain to give them a separate fiscal entity.  And if the hopes of Irish agriculture would be severely checked, still more would that be true of those hopes of new industries already referred to.  Even the great linen industry might find a small duty enough to transfer a large part of its production within the British tariff zone.  On the other hand, it is doubtful whether any tariff that Ireland could impose, consistently either with preference or with reasonable prices in so small a market and on so small a scale of production, could be of much effect against the competition of British industries, strengthened and made aggressive under the stimulus of a national trade policy.