Hewins, the intellect of Tariff Reform. The differences between England
and Ireland, he writes in his introduction to Miss Murray's book, are of
"an organic character." In that phrase is concentrated the whole biology
of Home Rule. Every organism must suffer and perish unless its external
circumstances echo its inner law of development. The sin of the Union
was that it imposed on Ireland from without a sort of spiked
strait-jacket which could have no effect but to squeeze the blood and
breath out of every interest in the country. What was meat to England
was poison to Ireland, and even honest Englishmen, hypnotised by the
economists of the day, were unable to perceive this plain truth. Let me
give another illustration. The capital exploit of Union Economics was,
as has been said, its dealing with the land question, but perhaps its
most pathetic fallacy was the policy with which it met the Great Famine.
Now the singular thing about this famine is that during it there was no
scarcity of food in Ireland; there was only a shortage of potatoes.

"In 1847 alone," writes Mr Michael Davitt in his "Fall of
Feudalism," "food to the value of £44,958,000 sterling was grown in
Ireland according to the statistical returns for that year. But a
million of people died for want of food all the same."

The explanation is obvious: the peasants grew potatoes to feed
themselves, they raised corn to pay their rents. A temporary suspension
of rent-payments and the closing of the ports would have saved the great
body of the people. But the logic of Unionism worked on other lines. The
government opened the ports, cheapened corn, and made rents harder to
pay. At the same time they passed a new Coercion Act, and reorganised
the police on its present basis to ensure that rents should be paid. To
the wisdom of this policy, history is able to call witnesses by the
million--unhappily however it has to call them from famine graveyards,