It is not, however, on the commercial side only that greater intimacy and more firmly established relations exist now than formerly.  Irish industries are agricultural, dairying and manufacturing.  In each of these branches the country is increasingly dependent on the markets of England and Scotland; while reciprocally the products of the factories and workshops of Great Britain find in Ireland one of their most important markets.  We do not always sufficiently realise that on the other side of the St. George’s Channel lies a country whose annual imports amount to sixty-five millions sterling.  Even less do we realise that one-half (thirty-two millions sterling) is the value of the imports of manufactures, mainly British, into Ireland.  This trade in manufactured goods is not only already enormous; it is rapidly growing.  It has increased by more than four millions in four years.  Any ill-considered legislative measure which interfered with or disturbed this great volume of trade would no doubt cause serious loss to Ireland; but it would bring bankruptcy and disaster to many British firms and their workmen.

It is, nevertheless, in respect of the political changes and the legislative measures passed in the last quarter of a century that the most serious obstacles will be found in the way of framing any satisfactory scheme for financing a measure of Home Rule.  The Irish Local Government system, framed on the British model by the Act of 1898, the Congested Districts Board, and the Department of Agriculture, have hitherto depended financially, either wholly or in part, on Imperial grants in aid.  Local taxation payments alone from the Imperial Exchequer amounted in 1910-11 to L1,478,000.  The financial scheme under Home Rule must obviously contemplate and provide for the continuance of those grants.  Land Purchase schemes have been enacted which have already had the effect of converting a quarter of a million tenants into owners under a contingent liability of 120 millions sterling guaranteed by the Imperial Exchequer.  No financial scheme can ignore the fact that the earliest of the annuities created under the Wyndham Act will not expire before 1972, so that the Imperial liability for the payment of the bulk of the annuities already created will continue for at least seventy years more.

Finally, we are faced with the fact that in the last twenty-five years the relations of the State to its citizens have been completely reformed and extended.  Social reform is now in the programme of all parties.  Education costs several times as much as in 1885.  The aged poor have been provided with pensions by the State, and the Insurance Act of last year will shortly call for additional subventions from the Imperial Treasury.