both the Dominions and the Commonwealth were founded on that vital principle of a pre-existent State independence surrendered voluntarily for larger ends.  The whole Empire depends on the principle of local autonomy, and, above all, on the principle of local financial autonomy.  Endeavours in America to sustain the opposite theory led to disaster.  We have for generations regarded it as perfectly natural that the self-governing Colonies should have Customs systems of their own, even when they are used for the purpose of imposing heavy duties on goods coming from the Mother Country, and we know that that liberty has borne fruit a hundredfold in affection and loyalty to the Imperial Government.  Until the Union of Great Britain and Ireland it was regarded as equally natural that Ireland should have control of her own Customs, along with all other branches of revenue.  Even after the Union, although there was no Irish control over anything Irish, it was recognized, until the fiscal unification of the two countries in 1817, that Irish conditions required a separate Customs system, which, in fact, existed until 1826.[140] How fiscal unification and the subsequent abolition of separate Customs was brought about I have told in Chapter XI.  It is not a pleasant story.  To say the least, the conditions, moral and material, were not such as to warrant the inference that there is any inherent necessity for joint Customs between Ireland and Great Britain.  The presumption raised by all subsequent events is in the opposite direction.

But the tradition of unified Customs, now nearly a century old, has immense potency, and unless it is fearlessly scrutinized and challenged, may be able, reinforced by the passions excited by the great controversy over Free Trade and Protection, to defy the warnings writ large upon the page of history.  The tradition must be so challenged.  Say what we will about the proximity of Ireland and Great Britain, descant as we will in law-books, pamphlets, leading articles, debates, on what ought theoretically to be the fiscal relations of the two countries, we cannot escape from the fact that, in this as in so many other respects, both the human and economic problem before us is fundamentally a colonial problem, and that its being so is not the fault of Ireland, but of Great Britain.

Belief in Home Rule seems to me necessarily to involve a willingness to give Ireland her Customs.  Great Britain has no moral right to lay it down that her views about trade shall govern the course of Irish policy; and if Great Britain believes sincerely in Home Rule, she should be willing to trust Ireland, regardless of the economic consequences, and regardless of the effect upon the great Tariff controversy.

The effect upon that controversy I shall not discuss.  It seems to me to possess only a tactical and electioneering interest, and that side of the Home Rule problem I have rigidly avoided, while expressing in general terms my belief that sound policy and sound tactics in reality coincide.  The Home Rule Bill is far more likely to be wrecked by timidity than by boldness, by precautions and compromises than by a fearless accommodation of British policy to Irish facts and needs.