in Ireland of new industries, such as the silk industry, would be a thoroughly justifiable extension of the Unionist policy carried out through the Congested Districts Board and the Department of Agriculture.  The diversion to Ireland of a larger part of the general national and Imperial expenditure, whether by the establishment of a naval base, or the giving out of battleship contracts, or even only of contracts for Army uniforms, would also be of appreciable assistance to Ireland and to the Union.  Ireland suffers to-day economically and politically, from the legacy of political separation in the eighteenth century, and of economic disunion in the nineteenth.  It is the business of Unionists not only to maintain the legal framework of the Union, but to give it a vitality and fulness of content which it has never possessed.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 54:  Speech at Whitechapel, Oct. 10, 1911.  There is an almost identical passage in Mr. Redmond’s article in McClure’s Magazine for October, 1910.  Sir J. Simon, the Solicitor-General, has since perpetrated the same absurdity (Dewsbury, Feb. 6, 1912).]

[Footnote 55:  The usual rhetorical appeal to “What Home Rule has done in South Africa” presents, indeed, a most perfect specimen of the confusion of thought which it is here attempted to analyse.  For no sooner had the Transvaal received “Home Rule” (i.e. responsible government) than it surrendered the “Home Rule” (i.e. separate government) which it had previously enjoyed in order to enter the South African Union.  Stripped of mere verbal confusion the argument from the Transvaal analogy then runs somewhat as follows:  “The Transvaal is now contented because it enjoys free representative institutions as an integral portion of a United South Africa; therefore, Ireland cannot be contented until she ceases to be a freely represented integral portion of the United Kingdom!”]

[Footnote 56:  Quoted on p. 54.]

[Footnote 57:  The position of New Zealand, outside the Australian Commonwealth, is no parallel.  New Zealand is almost as far from Australia as Newfoundland is from the British Isles; it differs from Australia in every climatic and physical feature; there is comparatively little trade between them.]

[Footnote 58:  Mr. Asquith at St. Andrews, Dec. 7, 1910.]

[Footnote 59:  See “The Times’ History of the South African War,” vol.  I. pp. 67 et seq.]

[Footnote 60:  Cf.  Mr. J. Redmond on the third reading of the Home Rule Bill of 1893.  “The word ‘provisional,’ so to speak, has been stamped in red ink across every page of the Bill.  I recognise that the Bill is offered as a compromise and accepted as such....  England has no right to ask from Irish members any guarantee of finality in its acceptance.”]

[Footnote 61:  Colonel Seely at Newry, December 9, 1911.]