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22. While a self-governing Ireland would contribute money to the defense of the federated empire, it would not be content that that money should be spent on dockyards, arsenals, camps, harbors, naval stations, ship-building and supplies in Great Britain to the almost complete neglect of Ireland as at present. A large contribution for such purposes spent outside Ireland would be an economic drain if not balanced by counter expenditure here. This might be effected by the training of a portion of the navy and army and the Irish regiments of the regular army in Ireland, and their equipment, clothing, supplies, munitions and rations being obtained through an Irish department. Naval dockyards should be constructed here and a proportion of ships built in them. Just as surely as there must be a balance between the imports and exports of a country, so must there be a balance between the revenue raised in a nation and the public expenditure on that nation. Irish economic depression after the Act of Union was due in large measure to absentee landlordism and the expenditure of Irish revenue outside Ireland with no proportionate return. This must not be expected to continue against Irish interests. Ireland, granted the freedom it desires, would be willing to defend its freedom and the freedom of other dominions in the commonwealth of nations it belonged to, but it is not willing to allow millions to be raised in Ireland and spent outside Ireland. If three or five millions are raised in Ireland for imperial purposes and spent in Great Britain it simply means that the vast employment of labor necessitated takes place outside Ireland: whereas if spent here it would mean the employment of many thousands of men, the support of their families, and in the economic chain would follow the support of those who cater for them in food, clothing, housing, etc. Even with the best will in the world, to do its share towards its defense of the freedom it had attained, Ireland could not permit such an economic drain on its resources. No country could approve of a policy which in its application means the emigration of thousands of its people every year while it continued.

23. I believe even if there were no historical basis for Irish nationalism that such claims as I have stated would have become inevitable, because the tendency of humanity as it develops intellectually and spiritually is to desire more and more freedom, and to substitute more and more an internal law for the external law or government, and that the solidarity of empires or nations will depend not so much upon the close texture of their political organization or the uniformity of mind so engendered as upon the freedom allowed and the delight people feel in that freedom. The more educated a man is the more it is hateful to him to be constrained and the more impossible does it become for central governments to provide by regulation for the infinite variety of desires and cultural developments which spring up everywhere and are in themselves laudable, and in no way endanger the State. A recognition of this has already led to much decentralization in Great Britain itself. And if the claim for more power in the administration of local affairs was so strongly felt in a homogeneous country like Great Britain that, through its county council system, people in districts like Kent or Essex have been permitted control over education and the purchase of land, and the distribution of it to small holders, how much more passionately must this desire for self-control be felt in Ireland where people have a different national character which has survived all the educational experiments to change them into the likeness of their neighbors. The battle which is going on in the world has been stated to be a spiritual conflict between those who desire greater freedom for the individual and think that the State exists to preserve that freedom, and those who believe in the predominance of the state and the complete subjection of the individual to it and the molding of the individual mind in its image. This has been stated, and if the first view is a declaration of ideals sincerely held by Great Britain it would mean the granting to Ireland, a country which has expressed its wishes by vaster majorities than were ever polled in any other country for political changes, the satisfaction of its desires.