Page:Home rule through federal devolution.djvu/31

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THROUGH FEDERAL DEVOLUTION
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that the Administration shall be in their hands, and directly and immediately responsive to their impulse and stimulus. Over and above this general popular tendency to look for miracles, the Irish voters have been indoctrinated with a belief—the seeds of which were unfortunately sown too freely in the long past—that English greed and trade jealousy still operate to prevent the expansion of Irish commerce and the development of Irish resources. To frustrate this supposed monopolistic hampering of Irish trade by restricting imports from England, while facilitating the export of produce by low outward rates, was shown to be a ruling motive with the promoters of the Vice-regal Commission on Irish Railways, in 1906–9, and inspired a great deal of the evidence. The Dominion Leaguers are cheerfully confident that under the rule of a Dominion Parliament there will be complete cross-channel free trade by agreement between Ireland and Great Britain; but it will be surprising if one of the first-fruits of separation be not the adoption of measures devised with the object of substituting a direct foreign trade in Irish produce for the cross-channel route by which it is now chiefly disposed of, by means of bounties on foreign exports, or duties on imports from England, or both; the foreign shipping trade being the region in which English selfishness is most frequently accused of malign influence. "Burn everything English, except their coals," was Swift's advice, and this is the spirit in which the cross-channel commerce is regarded very widely in Ireland, even by a good many who from their position ought to know better.

Much pains were taken by the framers of the constitution of the United States to keep the Executive and the Legislature apart. With that view, very exceptional powers, such as are enjoyed by no other constitutional ruler, were conferred on the President during his four years' term of office, and a mode of election by indirect voting, which it was believed would prevent the Presidency from becoming a party appointment, was devised.