From the first, the economic note will predominate in a Home Rule
assembly, not only in the sense in which so much can be said of every
country in the world, but in a very special sense. For the past decade
Ireland has been thinking in terms of woollens and linens, turnips and
fat cattle, eggs and butter, banks and railways. The conviction that the
country is under-developed, and in consequence under-populated, has been
growing both in area and in depth. With it there has been growing the
further conviction that poverty, in the midst of untapped resources, is
a national crime. The propagation of these two beliefs by journals of
the newer school such as _The Leader, Sinn Fein,_ and _The Irish
Homestead_ has leavened the whole mass of Irish life in our time. The
Industrial Development Associations, founded on them as basis, have long
ago "bridged the Boyne." At their annual Conferences Belfast sits side
by side with Cork, Derry with Dublin. It is not merely that the
manufacturers and traders have joined hands to advance a movement
beneficial to themselves; the best thought of every class in the country
has given enthusiastic support to the programme on grounds not of
personal interest but of national duty.
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