"
"Their habitations," the Report proceeds, "are wretched hovels;
several of the family sleep together on straw, or on the bare
ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes not even so much to
cover them. Their food commonly consists of dry potatoes; and with
these they are at times so scantily supplied as to be obliged to
stint themselves to one spare meal in the day.... They sometimes
get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at
Christmas, Easter, and Shrovetide."
But a truce to these dismal chronicles. The _post hoc_ may be taken as
established; was it a _propter hoc_? Was the Union the cause as well as
the antecedent of this decay? No economist, acquainted with the facts,
can fail to answer in the affirmative. The causal connection between two
realities could not be more manifest. Let us examine it very briefly.
I begin of necessity with the principle of freedom, for freedom is the
dominating force in economic life. No instance can be cited of a modern
people of European civilisation that ever prospered while held
politically in subjection.
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