Then our national organisation must educate the people, and our people as far as they may, should refuse the payment of such unjust taxation. Despite the fact that we pay for English departments to foster and assist our industries, Ireland is commercially paralysed. How can we expect the best of our people to stay in a land where they have no work and no opportunity. Again, England has deliberately failed to perform the essential function of the governor to protect and assist the commerce of the country. Her needs are not our needs, so we must go to the wall must forever though impoverished and needy, form the dumping ground for the great English manufacturer.
English parties talk about protection against competition of Germany, America and France.
But it is from England herself that Ireland needs protection today, and that assuredly England would never grant or agree to of her own will. But let us take this matter also into our own hands. We cannot have a State-sanctioned protection in the interests of our struggling industries, but we can if we will and have the spirit and determination to carry it through adopt a voluntary Protection . Our Public Boards and our whole people must support the home manufacturer, untrammelled by the economic cant about his being as good and as cheap. What we want and will have is Irish Manufacture, and so we must give a strong preference to our countrymen in competition with the foreigner, that our industries may be rebuilt and our country made prosperous.