The alleged excuse, at all events, for introducing this Bill is a dispute between the two Governments, the Irish Government and the English Government, on the question of land annuities. They did not reach an agreement on the question as to how arbitration could take place. We are now departing from the practice in vogue for the last nine or ten years. We refuse to pay over as we had done up to the present, the annuities to the National Debt Commissioners so that they could pay them to the bondholders. The English Government then proceeded to pass a Bill which gave them wide powers to put a tax or tariff or customs duty on every article that came directly or indirectly from this State to Great Britain. They followed up the passing of that Act into law by imposing a tax of 20 per cent. There has been a lot of discussion in the Press and in this House as to the effect of that particular 20 per cent. tax. We are told in the Press, especially in one organ of semi-public opinion, and we have been told even in this House that that step taken by the British Government of imposing a 20 per cent. tax on agricultural produce coming from Ireland into the English market is a blessing—a dawn of a new era— that it will do no damage to this country. On the contrary, it will bring great benefit to this country. The only people it will damage will be the English people.
Yet, though the people are told that —I presume the purpose again is to delude the people—we are asked to react to that particular move of England by giving the Government absolute power to take money—from England, is it? Nothing of the kind. To take the money from the people of this country, to tax the people of this country. That is the way we hit England back. We hit England back for the 20 per cent. tax by taxing our own people. That seems to the ordinary citizen of the country a most amazing method of benefiting the people of this country. It may cause embarrassment in England. I will admit that. Any dislocation of trade, even though our trade may be only 7 per cent. of the English trade, will cause embarrassment to the country affected. I have no doubt that this measure, if put into operation, will cause embarrassment to England, but it will cause ten times as much embarrassment to the people of this country, and that is what seems to have eluded the observation of the Government responsible for putting the measure before the House.
What are we asked to do? Let Deputies and the citizens of the country read the Bill. What we are asked to do is to give absolute power into the hands of the Executive Council over every penny in this country, whether it belongs to Irishmen, Irish companies, or English companies, or anybody else, in this country. There is no safeguard whatsoever. At the last moment, it is true two sub-sections were introduced which have the pretence of preserving some kind of Parliamentary control over this matter. In reality, of course, the sections do nothing of the kind. It is not in sub-sections (2) and (3). You have not the usual provision that the order shall remain in force two or three months. It will be for eight months, which will incidentally bring us up to the end of the financial year. Apart from that, I should like to have it explained by responsible members of the Government, if it is not possible for the Executive Council to issue an order for seven months. It does not cease to operate by the flow of the eight months, because it is not an order for eight months. Then, on the following day, they can reintroduce this for another seven months, with the result that there is absolutely no control, even in form. Even if it were put on eight months, the control would be only a mere matter of form, but, as it stands, even in form there is no control by this House over the actions of the Executive. Remember the power is absolute. It is not merely power, as Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney pointed out, to put a customs duty on every article coming from England, directly or indirectly, into this country, but a power to take complete control of all the wealth of the citizens of this country.
It is characteristic of the Government that in introducing a Bill of this kind no explanation was given of the meaning of the different sections. Printed and given into the hands of Deputies, the most important Bill probably we have ever discussed, cutting at the very root of our whole economic system, it was thrown at Deputies without explanation, with, at the very best, a lot of rhetoric. There was no reference even to that paragraph (d) of sub-section (1). There is no limit whatsoever in this Bill to the Government's control over every penny belonging to any individual in this country. If they cannot get it by customs duties, by excise duties— though these are so wide that I do not know what the limits are—there are the stamp duties. It may be said that they cannot increase the income tax. I am not so sure that they cannot do something by the way of stamp duties even there. We saw what stamp duties and other things could effect, when we were dealing with the Finance Bill. They could raise pretty sums of money for the Government.
How is this Bill going to effect its purpose? It will probably do some dislocation, great or small—we need not dispute the extent, for that is a matter only time can tell—to the English trade; but it will completely dislocate the whole trade of this country. It means bankruptcy if it is enforced, and I presume the intention is to enforce it with vigour; otherwise I do not understand what all the pother is about. It means bankruptcy for many private individuals and firms in this country.
I am not a bit surprised that the Labour Party are supporting this Bill. Deputy Curran need not have assured us that they were going to do so. Not-withstanding the rumours of dissatisfaction that appear in the papers, nobody in this Party ever suspected that the Labour Deputies would kick against the Government. We knew they would come to heel. I would have much more confidence in some sensible members of the Fianna Fáil Party, and I presume there are such, voting against this Bill, before the Labour Party would do so. The Labour Party may have other inducements to vote for this Bill. It means complete State control. It is the climax to the whole economic policy that has been pursued in the last couple of months. The tendency has been more and more towards State control. So far as legislation can give State control, you have it in this Bill. There is no limitation so far as this Bill is concerned.
England has not the will to damage the agriculture of this country. It is not to her interest to do so. Many of the Fianna Fáil appeals to the people in the past have depended upon that very state of affairs. They have told the people, again and again, that the English Government will never impose this tax; that they dare not do it. It is against their interests, we are told, and therefore they will not do it. I say they have neither the will nor the interest to do it. This whole situation which we are now facing, which as was said last night, any sensible man could have foreseen, is the result of the way in which negotiations, or lack of negotiations, were conducted between the two countries. We had a great deal of time spent and a great deal of sensation caused by the finance policy of the Government that was introduced in the Finance (No. 2) Bill, and in the Budget Bill. But all that, much as it upset the country, great an upset as it was to our whole economic system, pales into insignificance in comparison with the powers asked for by the Executive Council in this Bill. If the people felt themselves hit, if industries were ruined by certain proposals in the tariffs already imposed and in the Finance Bill, all that is nothing in comparison with the effects of this particular measure. Nobody can tell the disaster that a Bill of this kind will cause to the people of the country. And all what for? For causing a certain amount of uneasiness, a certain amount of dislocation, to English trade. We are to commit economic suicide, social suicide; we are to destroy our whole social economic system for the psychological satisfaction of having hit back, because that is what it amounts to.
We are discussing this Bill as we have discussed every piece of policy put forward by the Fianna Fáil Party, from one point of view only, and that is the effect it is going to have on the people of this country. We opposed their Oath Bill and their tariff policy, because we felt that these things were disastrous to the people. Despite the threat the President uttered a couple of nights ago—I suppose he will deny it was a threat and will declare it was a mere statement, but we have learned from the past that prophecies and statements from the President are liable to get a very practical application from his followers in the country-it is the duty of the Opposition to prevent, as far as they can, this country being sabotaged merely for the psychological pleasure of hitting back at what has been referred to on the opposite benches as the enemy.
We want peace, we are told, and friendly feeling. With whom? The people who, in the next breath, are referred to as the enemy? We have listened to professions of good-will, but when it comes to practice where is the good-will or the good feeling? Where is there any sense of justice? We are ready to sacrifice all our interests, not to promote any ideal of national liberty, not for anything of that kind, but simply for mere hatred of the other side.
We oppose this measure on purely Irish and national grounds because we think it means disaster for this country —disaster and not, as some people have said, the dawn of a new era. I see no trace of the dawn either in the 20 per cent. put on by the English Government on our produce, or in this retaliatory measure that we are told is no retaliation. What else is it? Are we going to collect the land annuities? The English suggest that they will collect them by means of the 20 per cent. Are we going to do anything of the kind? Who is going to pay? The person who will pay is the person who buys English produce in this country. If the English people only sent into this country one quarter of the amount of goods that we import it might be a different situation; but when they send in most of them, of course, it is we who will have to pay.
Let us know precisely how this Bill is going to be worked. Let us be told what is the significance, not merely of the customs clause, though we should like to know the extent to which it is to be enforced, but also of clause (d). Let us be told what is the reason for clause (d). That is the clause that most of the public have paid no attention to, and yet I believe it is the most sinister clause of the lot. There is an aim in that clause that has not been put before the people, and it is time the Government told us what they intend by an excise clause, and what they intend to do.
This is a Bill, I admit, to hit the English, but it will punish Ireland ten times as hard for the pleasure of doing that. The Dáil has to make up its mind. The country, we know from the way in which the Party opposite have treated the interests of the country up to the present, will be dragooned into obedience to this Bill. The people will not have a chance in the matter. I say the responsibility is on the Dáil for all the disasters, all the unemployment and all the bankruptcies that this Bill is bound to cause if it is put into operation. There is no trace of economics in this Bill. It is simply politics gone mad, as in the case of most of the so-called economic measures of the Government. Everybody knows that in most of the so-called economic measures there is a great deal more politics than economics. This is pure politics and nothing else.
From the economic point of view, we stand to lose not to gain by this Bill. Deputy Roddy, I think, stressed the importance of good-will in respect of markets. That applies to every country in the world. We are not going to be an exception, though, from the way people speak here, one would think that we were in a position apart, that the same laws that operate and hit other countries are inoperative so far as we are concerned. Good-will is necessary in a market. That good-will, to a large extent, we had in the British market. It was important for us in our principal market. Before this Bill was introduced, was any effort made by the Party opposite to preserve that good-will? Did they care whether it was lost or not? Did they care whether, apart from any action by the British Government, the British people might revolt against some of the acts of which they were guilty and boycott our goods? They did not care. They went ahead. They behaved precisely as if what we did here would have no economic effect whatsoever. I know no country that would behave in a similar fashion towards a country which provided its principal market.
This is a thing that other countries, as I know, are particularly keen about. They go to a great deal of trouble and a great deal of expense in working up good-will. Here we have a Government in power with the most simple ideas about anything connected with commercial life—with the idea that you can take a thing asunder, break it to bits, do what you like with it and at your own good pleasure put it back again and it will be as sound as ever. Unfortunately, commercial relations are not to be dealt with in that summary and simple fashion. A market is a difficult thing to get into. It is a difficult thing to hold and it is a difficult thing to regain when you have lost it. It was criminal, at least, not to weigh the consequences of a policy that endangered our principal market, after the home market. We have examples of what I have been urging in certain commodities that we export to England. Everybody knows that one of the difficulties so far as the butter trade with Britain is concerned is the keeping up of a constant supply all the year round, keeping hold of the customers you have and keeping in touch with the good-will you have established. Apart from this Bill, all that is thrown to the winds but it will come to a climax in this Bill if it is enforced.
So far as this Bill is concerned, is it not quite clear that those who speak of taking the Irish side are incapable of seeing the Irish side on account of their hostility to the other country and their hatred of the other country? Even now that we are free—so free that, as a peculiar result of the "slavery" which was established here ten years ago, we can bring in this measure and that we are at full liberty to take other measures of a far-reaching character—their hatred of England is so great that it shuts off the view of this country completely. So long as England can be hit, Ireland can go down. To-day I met a man—he did not know to what Party I belonged—who did not mind so long as there was a fight to a finish. He was going to lose. I pointed out to him that he would lose. He said: "I am glad it will be a fight to a finish now, no matter what the finish is." That is an example of the slave mind that we have noticed continually in the opposite party, the hatred and the obsession of England being so great that Ireland is completely shut off from their view. I can tell Deputy Maguire that we had certain fears when this Government took office. We feared what any reasonable man could have foreseen. We feared that, as the President said last night, "a situation would arise that anybody could have foreseen.""The position," he said, "was bound to occur or something like it was bound to occur if we were really determined to stand by our rights." Again, he said: "I have said at the beginning that there was no person in this country who did not realise that if we were serious in this matter we would have to face a situation such as we are now facing." He did not tell the people of the country that during the election. He told them that he was going to keep the land annuities and that he was going to abolish the Oath. He told them that there was not a single person in England who would raise the slightest objection to the abolition of the Oath. He told them that in several speeches before the election. He indicated to the people that there would be no trouble. He did not tell them that they were in for an economic war. Now they are in for it. We had fears as to what the result of the policy of the Government would be. I am willing to confess to Deputy Maguire that all these fears have been amply justified. We knew perfectly well that the Executive Council, led by the President, would lay destructive hands on the magnificent structure set up here as the result of the work of the last ten years, but the most pessimistic of us was amazed at the quickness with which that work of destruction proceeded.
It is poor comfort for us to know that the serious fears we had of the President's actions are justified. It is no comfort to us that, in an attempt to justify himself, the President should come here and say, "Seanad or no Seanad, the Oath is gone." The law does not matter with the man. He is above the law. "Seanad or no Seanad, the Oath is gone." In order to give him the satisfaction of putting his policy into operation, this country is to be destroyed. We had very little doubt as to the effects of his policy on the relations between this country and our neighbour, though he never put before the country the likelihood of this economic war. The members of the Fianna Fáil Party preached "Peace, peace," and all the time they were heading for trouble. They had that word, "Peace," in their mouths, but all the time their actions were dictated by hostility and by hostility alone. Their actions could not have been different had they proclaimed a policy of open hostility at the time they were preaching peace. They said they wanted peace, and they took every step calculated to make peace impossible. Speaking on the Oath Bill, I ventured to point out that there was a possibility that if that policy had been taken up in another way it would have succeeded, but the Executive Council had gone about the matter in such a way as if they wanted to fail. Regard the whole economic policy of the Government and you must come to the same conclusion. The policy, even in its declared objects—the abolition of the Oath and the retention of the land annuities— raised a delicate situation between the two Governments.
I believe that if the new diplomacy had not been tried some accommodation might have been possible on these two points. I am only forced again as I was in the case of the Oath to the conclusion that if there is failure here it is because the Government wanted failure. Remember that is not far-fetched. Deputy O'Reilly speaks of the golden future. This is the first step to the golden future. Deputy Corry representing a farming community from Cork is delighted that this step is taken, and again he speaks of the great future there is to be built on it. The President himself, on more than one occasion, has spoken of the necessity of making this a self-contained island. When I see him adopting the policy which carries out that declared purpose, I suggest that it is not ineptitude that has led to the present situation.
It is deliberate policy. He does not want a peaceful settlement of these matters. There is only one possible way of reading the declarations and actions of the President and some of the principal members of his Government. It is very cold comfort to be told as we were by Deputy Corry last night that the farmers are going—I think his words were something like this—"The farmers are going wallop anyway and the quicker they go, the better." There is great comfort in that for the farmers of the country? That is the sort of thing that will put great courage into them to face the new situation? That is the way to overcome the spirit of defeatism that the speeches of the Government members are instilling into the farmers. "They are going wallop anyway, and the sooner the better." That is Deputy Corry's contribution to the situation. I referred to Deputy Corry on more than one occasion because I am convinced that the Deputy has the unhappy knack of telling in his own blunt fashion what is in the minds of the Executive Council.
Here we have Government control in excelsis. When we pointed out the dangers of the various other measures of the Government and said they were leading in the direction of complete State control, in the direction of the socialisation of the wealth of this country, of course the President scoffed at it. He always does scoff when we point out these things. He scoffed at the idea of any trouble with England as a wicked thought. He does not want socialism, not he. He only wants to break the present system. He is a man with a mission, a man who wants to remodel it. Plainly in his policy every step has been in the direction of State control in this country.
This is the biggest effort and the longest step that has yet been taken in that direction and I have no doubt that he will scoff when the charge is made again about socialism. He will merely call it remodelling our system on Christian principles. Well, we prefer to take our Christianity and our ideals of Christian principles from a man with a different record from the President of the Executive Council. We see that his policy is facing in a certain direction and we are not to be cajoled into an acceptance of those dangers and damnable doctrines by putting "Christian" before them. I am not aware that a dose of Bolshevism may be more readily swallowed if you put "Christian" before it, especially if that is put before it by an unauthorised person like the President of the Executive Council. That does not change its nature.
The President is a man with a mission, a most dangerous kind of man. We saw the hysteria with which he treated this House on more than one occasion. We saw him whip his followers into hysteria on more than one occasion. This issue should not be treated in an hysterical fashion. But he is a man with a mission, a man who is going to smash the present system and remodel it in accordance with the principles he has, but which no man is clear about. He is to smash the present system; that is his mission. According to the ordinary man's judgment he seems to be facing straight for State control. I suggest that the Irish nation is not the corpus vile on which can be tried his experiments of socialisation and reconstruction. The Irish nation is not the body on which he can experiment so as to show the world that he was right always. We appeal to the people on the opposite benches if they have the welfare of this country at heart to look at this issue from the Irish point of view, and from the Irish point of view there is nothing to be said for this Bill but total and complete condemnation.