Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/31

 Rh which was by no means to be allowed free access to world markets typifies much else that Ireland has been relentlessly forced to contribute to her neighbor's growth and sole profit.

I read but yesterday—"Few people realize that the trade of Ireland with Great Britain is equal to that of our trade with India, is 13,000,000 pounds greater than our trade with Germany, and 40,000,000 pounds greater than the whole of our trade with the United States." How completely England has laid hands on all Irish resources is made clear from a recent publication that Mr. Chamberlain's "Tariff Commission" issued towards the end of 1912.

This document, entitled "The Economic Position of Ireland and its Relation to Tariff Reform,'" constitutes, in fact, a manifesto calling for the release of Ireland from the exclusive grip of Great Britain. Thus, for instance, in the section "External Trade of Ireland," we learn that Ireland exported in 1910, £63,400,000 worth of Irish produce. Of this Great Britain took £52,600,000 worth, while some £10,800,000 went either to foreign countries, or to British colonies, over £4,000,000 going to the United States. Of these £11,000,000 worth of Irish produce sent to distant countries, only £700,000 was shipped direct from Irish ports.

The remainder, more than £10,000,000 although the markets it was seeking lay chiefly to the West, had to be shipped East into Great Britain and to pay a heavy transit toll to that country for discharge, handling, agency, commission, and reloading on British vessels in British ports to steam back past the shores of Ireland it had just left. While Ireland, indeed, lies in the "line of trade," between all Northern Europe and the great world markets, she has been robbed of her trade and artificially deprived of the very position assigned to her by nature in the great