which has ever since marred the Irish Nationalist movement. John
Fitzgibbon[2] pointed out in the Irish House of Commons that only two
alternatives lay before his country--Separation or Union. Under
Separation an Irish Parliament might be able to pursue an economic
policy of its own; under Union the common economic policy of the two
countries might be adjusted to the peculiar interests of each.

Pitt, undoubtedly, looked forward to a Customs Union with internal free
trade as the ultimate solution of the difficulty, but a Customs Union
was impossible without the fullest kind of legislative unity. It is true
that the closing years of the eighteenth century were years of
prosperity to certain classes and districts in Ireland, but Mr. Fisher
has shown beyond dispute that this prosperity neither commenced with
Grattan's Parliament nor ended with its fall. It was based upon the
peculiar economic conditions which years of war and preparations for
war had fostered in England; it was bound in any case to disappear with
the growing concentration of industrial interests which followed the
general introduction of machinery. The immediate result of the passing
of the Act of Union was to increase the Irish population and Irish
trade.

But to a certain extent that prosperity was fictitious and doomed to
failure so soon as peace and the introduction of scientific methods of
industry had caused the concentration of the great manufactures. Then
came the great economic disaster for Ireland--the adoption of free trade
by England. The Irish famine of 1849 was not more severe than others
that had preceded it, but its evil effects were accentuated by the
policy of the English Government. The economists decided that the State
ought to do nothing to interfere with private enterprise in feeding the
starving people, and as there was no private enterprise in the country,