Since then the underlying conditions of Irish economic life have undergone a complete transformation.  The wealth and credit of the United Kingdom have been used to inaugurate a settlement of the agrarian question.  The productive and competitive efficiency of Irish agriculture has been enormously increased both by Government advice and assistance and by patriotic private effort.  Old Age Pensions have alleviated the burden of an excessive residue of older persons, and irrigated the poorer districts with a stream of ready money.  In every direction there is a deliberate effort to raise the economic standard of Ireland to the British level.  Last, but by no means least, the exclusion of all foreign live stock from the United Kingdom, though originally designed only as a precautionary measure against cattle disease, has in effect protected one most important branch of Irish agriculture and given it a vital interest in the maintenance of the Union.  On the eve of the revival of a national policy of economic development Ireland stands on a far sounder basis, and in a far better position to take advantage of that development, than in 1800.  The standard of life is rising, and will of itself put a check on a mere multiplication of beings living on the margin of subsistence.  For the natural increase of population, which will once more come about, there will be provision not only through more intensive cultivation and in rural industries, but also in a real, though possibly gradual, development of new manufacturing industries.  Incidentally the establishment of a protective tariff for the United Kingdom will, by lowering the excessive duties on tea and tobacco which weigh so heavily upon Ireland, increase still further the local excess of Government expenditure over revenue and facilitate the local accumulation of capital, already so noticeable a feature of recent years, and thus provide an essential factor in stimulating new enterprise, whether agricultural or industrial.  Nor would it be in any way inconsistent with a national economic policy for the United Kingdom as a whole to devote special sums, through bounties and in other ways, towards the opening up of new fields for the economic activities of the Irish people.  For the first time in her history Ireland will have a fair start, and, under the Union, the twentieth century may yet prove Ireland’s century just as Canadians claim that it will prove Canada’s century.

Now let us turn to the other side of the picture.  The establishment of Home Rule, in other words of political separatism, must inevitably be followed by active economic separatism, i.e. by the creation of a completely separate fiscal system in Ireland.  The idea that an Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer can carry on in dependence on a British Budget, which may at any moment upset all his calculations of revenue, is absurd.  So is the idea that there can be separate tariffs with mutual Free Trade, or a common tariff