latter opinion was very forcibly maintained a few weeks later by a
member of the Government with some reputation as an economist. Speaking
to a branch of the United Irish League in London, Mr. J.M. Robertson,
Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, summarily rejected fiscal
autonomy for Ireland, which, he said, "really meant a claim for
separation." "To give fiscal autonomy," he added, "would mean
disintegration of the United Kingdom. Fiscal autonomy for Ireland put
an end altogether to all talk of Federal Home Rule, and he could see no
hope for a Home Rule Bill if it included fiscal autonomy."[23]

Although the Secretary to the Board of Trade was probably not in the
confidence of the Cabinet, many people took Mr. Robertson's speech as an
indication of the limits of financial control that the Bill would give
to Ireland. On the same day that it was delivered the Dublin
Correspondent of _The Times_ reported that the demand of the
Nationalists for control of Customs and Excise was rapidly growing, and
that any Bill which withheld it, even if it could scrape through a
National Convention, "would never survive the two succeeding years of
agitation and criticism"; and he agreed with Mr. Robertson that if, on
the other hand, fiscal autonomy should be conceded, it would destroy all
prospect of a settlement on federal lines, and would "establish virtual
separation between Ireland and Great Britain." He predicted that
"Ulster, of course, would resist to the bitter end."[24]

Ulster, in point of fact, took but a secondary interest in the question.
Her people were indeed opposed to anything that would enlarge the
separation from England, or emphasise it, and, as they realised, like
the Secretary to the Board of Trade, that fiscal autonomy would have
this effect, they opposed fiscal autonomy; but they cared little about
the thing in itself one way or the other. Nor did they greatly concern