A mere agricultural state … is always economically and politically dependent on those foreign nations which take from it agriculture in exchange for manufactured goods. It cannot determine how much it will produce—it must wait and see how much others will buy from it.
From this standpoint, Griffith maintained that ‘an agricultural nation is a man with one arm who makes use of an arm belonging to another person, but cannot, of course, be sure of having it always available. An agricultural-manufacturing nation is a man who has two arms of his own at his own disposal’ at all times.101
Fr Finlay’s espousal of the idea of creating a more self-sufficient agrarian economy in Ireland had reflected the economic ideal of protectionism that was championed by both the Tories (who had been in power since 1896) and Horace Plunkett’s new Department of Agriculture at Dublin Castle. However, Griffith maintained that the only value of protectionism lay in its capacity to create a more balanced economy. True protectionism, he emphasised, ‘does not mean the exclusion of foreign competition—it means rendering the native manufacturer equal to meeting foreign competition … [by refusing to] see him crushed by mere weight of foreign capital’. Protectionism, therefore, meant maximising the potential benefits to be derivable from both domestic and international commerce in both an agricultural and manufacturing sphere.102 As was reflected by his call for Ireland to become an agricultural-manufacturing nation, Griffith desired for Ireland to become a competitive trading nation. This necessitated breaking through Britain’s protective trade wall that governed the economy of Ireland by dictating that Ireland could not trade outside the United Kingdom. To some extent, Griffith echoed Tory propaganda since the end of the Anglo-Boer War in calling for ‘that unity of material interests which produces national strength’: this was how he defined ‘the policy of the National Council’.103 Nevertheless, Griffith meant this in a purely Irish, rather than United Kingdom, context. Other minds were working in a similar, if somewhat different, direction.
Irish Tories had recently established an ‘Ulster Unionist Council’ to champion the idea of making local government representation the bedrock for their political organisation. As an extension of this trend, the old Ulster Party leadership represented by landowners like Edward Saunderson were being challenged by the likes of James Craig, the new MP for East Down. Craig identified far more with the empire as a purely commercial entity than with the British state, advocated tariff reform and, with the assistance of Belfast city council (first established in 1888), had attempted in vain to establish a Belfast Stock Exchange to prioritise local Irish economic interests.104 Griffith claimed that the Sinn Féin Policy’s ‘hope lies in the future attitude of the Protestant democracy of Ulster’. He expressed a hope that it would soon reject ‘the bloated plutocrats and hungry lawyers whose Protestantism was confined to beating the Orange drum once a year’ and join with his National Council and Crawford’s party in realising that all Irish workers ‘have been sold by English parties without any material gain to the country’.105 In making these arguments, he was clearly hoping to make some inroads upon Craig’s political support base.
Robert Lynd, a popular Belfast writer and essayist from a Presbyterian background, agreed with Griffith’s perspective. He wrote a pamphlet for the National Council in which he cited Griffith as the best possible political guide for northern workers. Lynd noted that while many Ulster Protestants were being encouraged to point to the rapid growth of Belfast from a small town into a major city as an indication that Ireland was well governed, ‘no true Orangeman, I am sure, will consider a thriving Belfast anything but a small compensation for a dwindling and decaying Ireland’. Furthermore, as recent developments had shown (namely, Craig’s failure to establish a viable Stock Exchange in Belfast), Belfast’s commercial success was not at all dependent upon local entrepreneurial ability but rather a total servitude to more powerful London-based firms, thereby potentially bringing about Belfast’s ultimate economic decline.106 The Dublin Tory author Standish O’Grady similarly suggested that Griffith’s policy should encourage all Irish Tories to ‘shift their ground’: ‘they can only oppose the Constitution of 1783 by proclaiming themselves a foreign garrison. They cannot oppose it as Irishmen.’107
Griffith placed much emphasis upon the question of Ireland’s harbour, port and dock boards. He noted that these port authorities were currently refusing to publish annual returns of goods imported solely because London firms’ shipping agents governed them. However, he suggested that it was potentially in their power to work with the county councils in calling for the restoration of Irish customs authorities.108 ‘To bring Ireland out of the corner and make her assert her existence in the world’, Griffith also argued that an effort should be made to encourage the Dublin Stock Exchange and the banks of the country (principally, the former ‘national bank’, the Bank of Ireland) to end their unionist policy of directing all Irish capital to be invested in British stock rather than in industries within Ireland.109 Griffith also protested that of the £250,000 subscribed to the Irish Party over the past decade ‘not a shilling of that money was expended during all those years by the Parliamentary Party in explaining to the Irish people how they were overtaxed, in outlining any policy for them to follow in the matter, or even in assembling them to consider the question’.110
Some of Griffith’s concerns were echoed by A.W. Samuels K.C., the successor of W.E. Lecky and predecessor of Edward Carson as the MP for Trinity College Dublin. He was also president of that college’s Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland. This society’s journal had subscribers in universities throughout Europe and North America. Samuels similarly maintained that the question of the management of Irish finances ‘require earnest consideration on the part not only of those who interest themselves in economic problems or take part in the administration of Ireland, but also of every person who, as public man or private citizen, dwells in or has to do with this country’.111
Samuels maintained that ‘the system of subvention of the local needs of Ireland and Scotland, inaugurated in 1888 [in conjunction with the English local government act of that year], is neither constitutional nor financially sound’. This was because ‘the basis upon which the percentages of 80 per cent for England, 11 per cent for Scotland and 9 per cent for Ireland were fixed has never been explained, and the figures and calculations upon which it was established have never been disclosed.’ In the absence of the office of Vice Treasurer of Ireland (abolished by Gladstone in 1872), no means of appealing for financial fair play for Ireland even existed. Instead, all Irish revenue was included within that of the United Kingdom and only a maximum of 9 per cent of such revenue could ever be reinvested in Ireland. While some English politicians maintained that the respective populations of each country justified this arrangement, Samuels argued that this ‘is not in accordance with constitutional right or fair play’ as ‘taxation should be so arranged as to fall equally—that is with equality of burden according to their resources—upon each of the three kingdoms … fairly applied to meet the particular needs of each of the three kingdoms’. If this was not done, then the existence of the Union could only be ‘to the detriment of Ireland’. Therefore, Samuels suggested, there was a need to return to ‘the financial principles [of equality between the kingdoms] upon which they entered that Union’ in 1801; principles that had first been established or won during the later-eighteenth century by Grattan’s parliament.112
Griffith’s principle hope for the Sinn Féin Policy was evidently that this particular Irish Tory (‘unionist’) case could be adapted and made to serve Irish nationalist purposes through the medium of the National Council. However, although 75 per cent of the 6,000 individuals currently employed by the urban and county councils and poor law boards in Ireland claimed to hold nationalist sympathies, they equated this sympathy simply with loyalty to the Irish Party in opposition to all the Irish Tories’ ideas. They were certainly not likely to embrace Griffith’s idea of making a unilateral decision to act like ‘a national civil service’, as opposed to an imperial one, by joining the National Council because that would have inherently meant rejecting the Gladstonian politics of home rule to which the Irish Party