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Argentina.

The Consul at Rosario in the Argentine Republic reports (page 4): "I am informed that linen and cotton goods are received here from Ireland, but as they are purchased. through agents in England and shipped from English ports there are no statistics obtainable regarding their quantity or value.' This is, of course, what English commerce has all along designed-Ireland to be made an island beyond an island, having no direct dealings with any country on God's earth from Kamschatka to Peru.

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Brazil.

The story of the British Consul in Rio Grandedo Sul— the most southerly of Brazilian ports and a near neighbour to Rosario-is the same (page 4): "There is a considerable demand for Irish linens, cotton drills, handkerchiefs, etc., which are readily disposed of notwithstanding the high prices due to the Custom duties. Unfortunately, owing to the absence of published returns it is difficult to find out the particulars of the amounts and varieties of the Irish goods imported, but their excellent qualities render them more attractive than the native manufactures."

Costa Rica.

Here we have the same admission of the absence of all published returns to guide us, whether at home or abroad, while this Consul generously bears testimony to the excellence of Irish products. If we turn from South to Central America we find the Consul for Costa Rica telling the same tale (page 12): "The Statistical Department in Costa Rica do not classify Irish products separately, but together with merchandise imported from the United Kingdom. The only goods of Irish origin which are imported into Costa Rica are"-here follows a brief list of some Irish commodities from Belfast ginger ale and glacier window paper to linen as sheeting, towelling, serviettes and handkerchiefs, the Consul ending his remarks as his colleagues have all done : "Costa Rica has no consular officer in Ireland, and there is

no direct trade; but the merchants in buying through commission houses in London and Manchester order small quantities of Irish goods. No provisions or whiskey are imported from Ireland. No commercial travellers from Irish houses have to my knowledge visited Costa Rica during the past five years."

Ireland, we thus see enjoys everywhere the privilege of scnding and receiving everything she produces or needs through the toll-collecting channels of trade which have been carefully dug since the Act of Union to enrich England and England alone. She may make linens, but England sells them, and the profits of the transaction remain largely in the till of the vendor. She may build ships but not for herself. England kindly hoists her flag upon them, and they plough the seas as emissaries not of Irish but of British industry.

Should they carry in their holds some trifling bulk of Irish manufactured goods, it is the commission agents in Manchester or other middlemen of English commerce who intercept the stream of Irish industry and divert its over-flow to their own richly-cultivated fields. Even forty-seven years after the "Union" Ireland still retained some shipping of her own. In 1847 she had 2,215 sailing vessels of 241,789 tons. Where to-day are these and their crews? In the same year 507 vessels entered Irish ports coming direct from the British Colonies alone, and 694 vessels left Irish ports for those same Colonies. This direct trade of Ireland with countries abroad has now, after 108 years of "Union," well nigh entirely disappeared. It is indeed the Union, as Byron asserted, "of the shark with its prey. England has swallowed the Irish mercantile marine just as she has swallowed Irish revenues, and suppressed all the records bearing on the transaction.

It is not by directing British Cousuls to report upon the volume of Irish imports where no statistics exist to separate Irish from British manufactures that Irish commerce can be helped. The British Government knows this well. The first step in devising any real scheme of statistical assistance to Irish industry must be in the compilation of comparative statistics of trade dealings between Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland must know where she stands, not merely where the United Kingdom stands, as a buyer and seller.

As long as the Government of England persists in maintaining the fiction that as part of the United Kingdom the movement of trade to and from Ireland and Great Britain is merely an internal movement and one not to be separately noted or studied in any way, Ireland cannot tell where she stands commercially or financially. It is futile and misleading to call for impossible returns from abroad, when it is at home that the call for statistics is of first and supreme importance. The British Government fully realise this and have refused all satisfaction to Ireland in this matter of real moment while making sham "concessions" in the matter of Consular returns which they know better than anyone eise are wholly valueless to Ireland. On the 7th August, 1905, Mr. Boland asked the Chancellor of the British Exchequer, whether, having regard to the announcement of the British Board of Trade that they have no objection to separate returns of Irish commerce being issued, he can now see his way to annul the Treasury Minute of 1823 which provides that Irish commerce shall be treated as coasting trade, and require the Customs to furnish separate particulars of imports and exports to and from Ireland, as is done in the case of the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and all other parts of the British Empire. This question, which goes to the root of Irish comercial development, the British Government refused to entertain, Mr. Victor Cavendish rejecting it in the following terms: "My hon. friend the Secretary of the Board of Trade stated in reply to a question by the hon. member on 20th July, that the Irish Board of Agriculture had under consideration the question of compiling statistics of the trade between Great Britain and Ireland, but that referred only to information which would be obtainable under the existing system. I cannot agree to the proposal of the hon. member, as in my opinion no sufficient advantage would be gained to counterbalance the increased expenditure and the interference with trade which such a change would involve."

When it comes to the point and Ireland asks for anything of real significance-whether it be commercial or political— England is careful to refuse it--the "existing system" is then elevated among the mysteries of religion. It becomes impious to question it-and rightly so since the Englishman's religion is in his pocket. In this case "it would in

terfere with (English) trade." Quite true: and that tra le would derive "no sufficient advantage." Quite true again -that trade would, indeed, in the long run, stand to lose many of its present illegal and illgotten advantages if once Ireland seriously awakened to the true meaning of her "Union" with her neighbour and all the drain upon her every vein of life that Union was effected to create. It is, therefore, hopeless to expect that Irish trade can draw any benefit from British Consular reports or from the most sympathetic instructions of a British Foreign Secretary, or the sympathetic investigations abroad of British Consular officers.

Ireland must create her own Consular service, and her Consuls must have for the basis of their efforts abroad a ful. understanding of how Ireland stands at home.

The question Mr. Boland put on the 7th August, 1905, must be put again, anu put in Ireland, and Ireland must insist on having as clear and intimate a knowledge of her overseas traffic, import and export, as the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands possess.

This she can certainly obtain, and the Treasury Minute of 1823 must go the way of Lord Salisbury's "twenty years of resolute government" or George IV.'s refusal to break his Coronation Oath.

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Consumption.

Any man interested in Ireland and hearing the present tubercular outcry would naturally think that everything was going on all right and that consumption would soon be banished. Any man interested in Ireland and knowing the real state of things would conclude otherwise. So far we are only tinkering with consumption. We whine daily about the 12,000 who die annually and the thousands more who are going to follow suit. We print thousands of pamphlets and placards the total value of which amounts to the lighting of a few pipes. Have we yet done anything real, effective, or lasting? Have we, by our talking campaign, prevented even ten Irish boys or girls from getting the disease? Can we point out a single village or countryside where we have rooted out the disease and where we have educated the people to the normal sanitary requirements? Have we thrown down a single consumptive cabin and erected a healthy cottage for the poor, ignorant parents whose children are dying one by one? Have we even helped them to put in a good floor, or window, or roof, or chimney? No, to every question. Cures, means, panaceas, pamphlets, sanatoriums for consumptive Ireland, pound them all into one and that one will and must be subsidiary to the one great effectual remedy-education. Make the man know why he should do such a thing and avoid such another thing. Appeal to his reasoning powers. his senses an opportunity of presenting to his judging powers the facts of the case. His judgment is then sure to be right. He does not take poison in his food. Why? Observation, experience have convinced him that such takin would injure him. Yet, he takes poison in the shape of disease. He goes to a place where there is, say, typhoid fever. He places himself within range of the infection. gets the disease and probably dies. Why does he thus commit suiside? He is ignorant, he does not know. If we enquire into the cause of his ignorance of disease-poison, we will easily find it. From the earliest ages man avoided

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