deliberately exclude the previous waste of war and confiscation. She had
but twenty years of commercial freedom, and, despite her brilliant
success in that period, she had not time to accumulate capital to any
great extent. But Grattan's Parliament had shown itself extraordinarily
astute and steady of purpose in its economic policy. Had its guidance
continued--conservative taxation, adroit bounties, and that close
scrutiny and eager discussion of the movements of industry which stands
recorded in its Journal--the manufactures of Ireland would have
weathered the storm. But the luck was as usual against her. Instead of
wise leadership from Dublin the gods decreed that she should have for
portion the hard indifference and savage taxation of Westminster.
Reduced to the position of a tributary nation, stripped of the capital
that would have served as a commissariat of advance in that crucial
struggle, she went down.

I am not to make here the case for Ireland in respect of over-taxation.
It was made definitely in the Report of the Childers Commission, a
document which no Englishman reads, lest in coming to the light he
should have his sins too sharply rebuked. It has been developed and
clarified in many speeches and essays and in some books. To grasp it is
to find your road to Damascus on the Irish Question. But for the moment
we are concerned with but one aspect, namely, the export of capital from
Ireland as a result of the Union, and the economic reactions of that
process. Since we are to use moderation of speech and banish all
rhetoric from these pages, one is at a loss to characterise Union
arrangements and post-Union finance. Let it suffice to say that they
combined the moral outlook of Captain Kidd with the mathematical
technique of a super-bucket-shop. From the first Great Britain robbed
the Irish till; from the first she skimmed the cream off the Irish milk,
and appropriated it for her own nourishment. One has a sort of gloomy