The Export and
Import figures are little better than volunteer estimates; there is no
compulsion to accuracy. As to the yield of crops, all that can be said
is that our present information is not as bad as it used to be. But
above all we have no comprehensive notion of the condition of the
people. Whenever there has been an inquiry into wages, cost of living,
or any other fundamental fact, Ireland has come in as a mere tail-piece
to a British volume. All this we must change. The first business of an
Irish Parliament will be to take stock; and this will be effected by the
establishment of a Commission of a new kind, representative of science,
industry, agriculture, and finance, acceptable and authoritative in the
eyes of the whole nation, and charged with the duty of ascertaining the
actual state of things in Ireland and the wisest line of economic
development. Such an undertaking will amount to a unification of Irish
life altogether without precedent. It will draw the great personalities
of industry for the first time into the central current of public
affairs.
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