tariffs up to then common to both countries. They were few in number. Chief among the articles thus taxed were tobacco and cigarettes, motor cars, musical instruments, clocks, and watches, as well as a wide range of goods of comparatively minor economic importance, mostly chemicals. The effect of this change was soon felt, especially in connection with the manufacture of tobacco, and as a result several factories were established in Dublin by the English tobacco combine. The Government at once appointed a commission of economic experts to advise it on the whole question of tariffs, but, when the commission reported in favor of Free Trade, promptly ignored its recommendations. During the last three years the Government has imposed various fresh tariffs, the principal being on confectionery, soap, boots and shoes, clothing, and furniture. Practically all the industries included in these tariffs were already in existence within the Free State, and there can be no doubt that they have received some stimulus from the protection afforded them, although most of them cannot fully supply the demands of the home market and probably never will.

These new tariffs have created considerable political controversy, being strongly opposed by the farmers, who rightly believe they have everything to lose from a policy which must inevitably increase the cost of living without assisting agriculture, whose natural and only market is Great Britain. They recognize that restricted imports involve restricted exports, and the Free State cannot afford to lose its export trade. Our neighbors are our best customers and their prosperity is a condition of our well-being, as the coal strike has only too painfully reminded us. Even the Government itself is divided on this difficult

question and has now sought to escape from the dilemma in which it finds itself by appointing a Tariff Commission, on Canadian lines, of expert civil servants to report on the clamorous demands of the various interests, such as the flour and woolen manufacturers, who are not yet protected. All such demands must receive the imprimatur of this Commission before being considered by the Government. It remains to be seen whether this barrier will save the Government from sliding further down this slippery slope. The Free Trade critics of this policy have not been slow to point out that the world-wide reputation of such firms as Guinness and Jacob has been built up without the assistance of tariffs, and that these are in effect a protection for inefficiency. But all this controversy is healthy. It shows that we have abandoned the pursuit of shadows and are settling down to the discussion of political and economic realities just like other normal nations.

The more serious problem of the Ulster boundary has been happily solved after many excursions, and alarms. The Treaty left this problem undecided, but provided that a Boundary Commission should be set up whose findings should be binding and conclusive. The setting up of this Commission was long delayed by the refusal of the Northern Government to participate. Finally the British Government appointed an Ulster representative and the Commission sat. When their report was practically complete, in November 1925, Mr. John MacNeill, the Free State Representative on the Commission, resigned because of the uproar in the Free State caused by the premature disclosure of the decisions arrived at. A serious crisis at once arose, but after a conference between the British and Free State Governments in London an

agreement was arrived at, the most important articles of which provided that the Northern boundary was to remain as it was, and that the Free State was to be released from its obligation to assume liability for a share of the national debt of the United Kingdom at the date of the Treaty on payment of approximately six million pounds in discharge of English liabilities for Irish War Compensation.

This agreement has had important consequences. It has rescued the Free State Government from the results of the latter's own folly and it has acquitted England of all further obligation to interfere in Irish affairs. It is not likely that North or South will call her in again. The real truth, which both parties to the boundary controversy had refused to recognize, was that the only settlement that could be of value to either was a settlement by mutual consent, and that any other settlement could only inflame the bad feeling already existing and postpone any successful approach to Irish unity for many generations. The Northern boundary is a scar which past conflict has left on the Irish body politic. The sensible policy was to leave it to heal under the influence of time and experience. The Free State Government, on the contrary, desiring to placate its extreme adherents in the North, kept on irritating the wound, which became septic and nearly destroyed it. The London agreement was really due to the fact that the peoples of England, the Free State, and Ulster were tired of quarreling and, after three years of the status quo, had realized that the interests of no one could be advanced by any trivial alteration of the boundary, which was all that could be expected. The respective Governments were wise enough to realize this truth at the eleventh hour. The wisest course now is for both Free State and

Northern Ireland to go their own ways, neither courting nor threatening the other, but trusting to natural forces to reunite the country; and this is what is happening. The boundary is beginning to teach both North and South that Ireland cannot afford to be divided. The Free State Government's attitude toward Northern Ireland is one of passive rather than active friendship. No action of its will render reunion avoidably more difficult, but it will not at the same time alter what it considers the best policy for the Free State in order to please Northern Ireland.

IV

The financial results of the London agreement are of the utmost importance and leave the Free State with a national debt of approximately only twenty-two million pounds. This is less than one year's tax revenue, and works out at about £6.9.4 per head of population. Few countries are in a better financial position. It may be added that the national loan issued at ninetyfive pounds in 1924 has since gone over par, and that although our taxation, for a variety of unescapable reasons, is much too high, the Government is doing its best to reduce it progressively without departing from the sound principle of making taxation meet recurrent expenditure. Eventually the Free State taxpayer, like his fellows elsewhere, must choose between high taxation and a drastic curtailment of the present standard of national services. One cannot indulge champagne tastes on a beer income, and we must slowly but surely alter the extravagant English methods of administration we have inherited. We are beginning, somewhat painfully, to realize that votes in a free country are translated into action and have to be paid for.

Our relations with England are also

improving, although it may take another generation to exorcise completely the anti-English complex from Irish mentality. Mr. O'Higgins has recently laid down the Government's position in this respect with strength and clearness. He points out that this is no vassal state and that no section of the community desires it to be so, that peace has come between our people and the people of Great Britain, such a peace of mind and heart as has not existed since the conquest. He believes that friendship will follow because there is no desire to subject the interests of this state and its people to any other state or people under the British Commonwealth. The Government, he says, knows the status it has accepted and enshrined in the Constitution. It is no mean status, and the Government is not going to allow it to be demeaned by extremists of any kind. Challenged from the right, challenged from the left, it will keep to the middle of the road. This attitude is best for Ireland and best for England too. The more nearly we approach absolute equality in our relations with England, the less English politicians seek to interfere in our affairs, the greater will become our friendship. Good will between the two countries must grow from our racial ties and economic necessities and not from any artificial political union. The policy of the Free State representatives at the Imperial Conference has been directed to these ends, but in pursuing them they must exercise a wise expediency and regard for the feeling of others. The Free State is anxious to abolish all right of appeal from Dominion courts to the Imperial Privy Council, which is the High Court of Appeal of the British Empire, but it may be doubted if French Canada will agree to such a drastic proposal, as this right of appeal is a real safeguard against any interference by the Dominion Parlia

ment with the rights the Treaty of 1763 guaranteed the French province.

The Free State has also entered the field of international politics, and at the last sitting of the League of Nations Assembly its delegation challenged the Cecil-Fromageot plan by contesting one of the vacancies on the Council of the League. The speech of Mr. Desmond Fitzgerald on this occasion was universally praised, and made it clear that, while the Irish delegation held that all shades of opinion should be represented from time to time on the Council, it denied the right of particular groups to be at any time represented therein in any specified proportion, and denied more emphatically still the right of any group to choose from among its members a state which the Assembly would be under an obligation to elect. If the Free State is to justify its international existence its representatives must be prepared, as in this case, to speak their minds honestly and to act fearlessly, not as satellites in the English political system, nor out of antiEnglish prejudice, but as good Europeans striving for international peace and good will. Our position in the European system, an island beyond an island, coupled with our past political dependency on England, has prevented our people from taking an intelligent interest in foreign politics. The march of events will soon change this condition if our press and politicians take the trouble to educate themselves, and public opinion, as regards foreign affairs.

In the economic field substantial progress has also been made. The Minister for Lands and Agriculture, Mr. Hogan, after a careful study of the problem, has embarked upon, and has almost completed, a systematic overhaul of the agricultural industry. Farreaching schemes for the improvement of the education of the farmer and for the advancement of the science of

farming and dairy produce have, within the life of the present Government, passed from the stage of almost agelong discussion into legislative and executive fact. In these reforms the past work of the Irish Department of Agriculture and also of the Irish Agricultural Organization has been a factor of considerable help. Sir Horace Plunkett's policy of 'Better farming, better business, better living,' has been put into practical application. The exports of eggs and creamery products have been completely controlled and licensed, with the result that Irish agricultural produce is now taking first place in the British market. The comparative statistics as to the general trade between the two countries for 1925 show that per person the Free State sold goods valued at £13. 14. 0 to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is below the figures for New Zealand and Denmark, but greater than for Australia, Argentina, Canada (its rivals in food supplies), and all other countries. As regards purchases from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, New Zealand came first and the Free State second, buying per person goods valued at £12. 14. 0; Australia came third, and other countries far behind.

These figures prove clearly that Mr. Hogan is right in thinking that Irish agriculture requires technical rather than political treatment for its improvement, and that the remedy for agricultural depression is not to be found in loans, subsidies, and tariffs, but in improved methods of marketing and production. The Shannon waterpower scheme, which is the Government's magnum opus, will also help to this end. For this ambitious scheme the advice of the leading hydroelectric engineers in Europe has been obtained and acted on. The first stage, already far advanced, is estimated to generate 153 million units even in a very dry

year, and 288 million units (a unit is equivalent to one kilowatt hour) in an average year. The cost of this stage is estimated at £5,200,000, and the work has been entrusted to the famous German electrical engineering firm, Messrs. Siemens-Schückert. The English power system is built upon a basis of coal, and we have in the past followed suit, although we have practically no suitable coal and have to import what we use. Every other European country has built up its power system on its natural resources. The moral is obvious. Our power basis is all wrong, and the only natural policy is to aim at a power supply from home resources. This policy will both decrease our imports and increase production of essential commodities at home. In addition, by the provision of a liberal supply of cheap power universally available, it will, beyond all doubt, assist in increasing our exports, and reduce our coal imports by a sum of approximately £1,290,000 a year.

The Shannon power project is not only the first big project of our Government, but also an act of national faith in the future of the Free State. This faith is justified. Other important projects are also on foot. At Carlow, a prosperous agricultural centre, M. Lippens, one of the largest sugar manufacturers in Belgium, has financed and built a beet-sugar factory of the most modern type, which is capable of treating fifteen hundred tons of beet a day and which is now about to start operations. This factory is receiving a state subsidy, on a sliding scale, till the year 1936. At Cork Mr. Henry Ford's motor-car factory has now been in successful operation for nearly ten years and has proved a happy example of industry and courage in the midst of war's alarms.

In other directions we have also made enormous progress. Law and order have been fully and completely

established over the entire country. Roads, railways, hotels, and traveling facilities of all kinds are being constantly improved. The Irish Free State is now as peaceful as any country in Europe and as progressive as most. It is tackling its social problems with courage and intelligence. It is at present engaged in a revision of its liquor laws on the sane principle that it is not the business of the law to make people good but to preserve public order. It is proposed to reduce the present excessive number of public houses or saloons by at least a third. An indication of our attitude toward family life is disclosed by the refusal of the Irish Parliament to give facilities for absolute divorce with right of remarriage. This facility in effect never existed in Ireland, be cause in the past it could only be obtained by promoting a special bill in the English Parliament, a thing only possible to very wealthy people and seldom availed of. The great majority of the Irish people, both Protestant and Catholic, object to divorce, not only on religious principles, but because they believe it is a social evil, and that it is better that a few people should be unhappy than that the whole domestic life of the nation should be undermined. In this connection it is well to point out that the old dishonest political catch cry, 'Home Rule means Rome Rule,' has been conclusively exploded. The Catholic Church has not interfered in the affairs of the Irish Free State, and the Government has, both in its legislation and in its administration, treated Protestants with absolute fairness. A majority of the High Court judges, all appointed by the present Government, are actually of that persuasion. No cleric of any creed sits in either House of Parliament or on any local government council. In no country are the relations between Church and State more rational, correct, and cordial.

Neither has infringed upon the proper sphere of the other.

In local government matters reform has also been undertaken, corrupt local bodies dissolved, and the basis of administration altered. It is highly probable that the American city manager and council plan, with suitable modifications, will be adopted for our cities in the near future. The recent census discloses a decline in population for all Ireland of 3.7 per cent. This was not unexpected, and the chief drain is still, unfortunately, emigration to America, whose large Irish population exercises an enormous attractive power. This emigration must be reduced next year, when the quota falls from 28,000 to about 8000. How far it will be deflected into other channels, such as Canada and Australia, remains to be seen.

V

These are the results of five years of Irish self-government. What of the future? Can we say that the intangible national spirit of Ireland is satisfied and that the Free State is based on stable foundations? This is a question worth answering and difficult to answer. For over three hundred years our history has disclosed a series of almost rhythmic revolutions. We have passed from rebellion to repression, from repression to revival of the national spirit, and so on again through the weary cycle. Have we now reached a condition of stable equilibrium? I believe the answer lies with England. If her statesmen have enough courage and foresight to concede the position of equality which we demand, and virtually enjoy, and which as a mother country of the Celtic British race we can justly claim as of right, then our relations must progress from courtesy to friendship, and the last embers of the old hatred will grow cold and gray.