I want to outline the setting in which the Government found themselves and what I might call the gentleman's undertaking they had given the country, the political contract that was sanctioned by the country, on the one part, and President de Valera and the Fianna Fáil Party on the other part, not to increase the burden on agricultural land, but to wipe out that burden altogether. On that political contract the President got elected to power and that political contract he broke. If that were a legal contract the electors of this country would have a cause of action against the President and his Ministry. But there is no legal contract. The people, when they gave their votes, gave all they possessed to designate their citizenship in their native land; handed it over to President de Valera and his Party and handed it over to see it dishonoured since. When the present Government came into power over one and a half years ago they found the grants to agriculture for relief of rates made up of an original grant of about £600,000, which was able to be doubled in 1924 by the previous administration, and in 1931 the previous administration increased that grant by £750,000. At that time, President de Valera and his colleagues were very eloquent in this House and throughout the country in declaring that that was inadequate, that agriculture wanted more help than that. President de Valera at that time moved in this House a resolution that the increase in the agricultural grant should be £1,000,000 at least. The Cosgrave administration gave further relief to the extent of £750,000. That was not acceptable to the farming community. What was the reply of the Cosgrave administration to the dissatisfaction of the farming community and to the query that was raised as to what was going to be done with the produce of the taxation imposed to finance that further agricultural grant? The taxes imposed, speaking from memory —I have not my papers with me, as I had to come here direct from one of the President's coercion courts and I have not all the detailed references that I should like to have in reference to this, but I hope to be able to give them before the close of this debate—included 6d. in the £ on income tax, 4d. on petrol, and a halfpenny, I think, on sugar. I do not know if there was anything else. Anyway, at the time I remember calculating what the produce of this taxation would be for 12 months and it amounted to somewhere between £1,100,000 and £1,200,000 annually. A query was put to the previous administration as to what they were going to do with the profit they were going to make out of this new taxation, out of which they were only earmarking £750,000 for the relief of rates on agricultural land. The reply given was a reasonable one. The agricultural community, who put up the query, were informed by the Executive Council of the day that for the financial year 1931-2 these taxes would not be producing for 12 months, but that they would be producing for a period that would give approximately only £750,000. That was a fairly sound answer. In the following year these taxes were producing for 12 months. President de Valera and his Government inherited the produce of this taxation for 12 months, which amounted to between £1,100,000 and £1,200,000 paid into the Central Fund. But President de Valera did not see fit to have the same mentality as he had the year previously and give to suffering agriculture the relief that he said in 1931 was necessary to keep the life in agriculture. It shows that the President in this matter, as in every other matter that he ever took up, had no regard for the interests of this country but was only playing politics.
Anybody who follows the trend of prices knows that agriculture in this country, and probably all over the world, was more depressed in the beginning of 1932 by many points than it was in the beginning of 1931. Perhaps I would not be overstating the case if I took the President's basis as the proper basis to work upon. From the further depression that came over agriculture in 12 months, assuming that it was absolutely essential to keep agriculture on a certain standard in 1931, assuming that it required relief from the Central Fund to the extent of £1,000,000 to keep up the same standard in 1932, it would require relief to the extent of £1,500,000. The predecessors of the present Government relieved agriculture to the tune of £750,000 out of special taxation from which they had practically no more produce than that. But the President inherited a produce of about £1,200,000 out of that taxation and he gave only £750,000—the previous grant. Then he introduced a sum of £250,000 to be given for the derating of agriculture on farms up to £10 valuation— another vote-catching device of the President. Political propaganda was made out of this—political propaganda that the President had redeemed his promise or his outlook on the agricultural situation of the year before, but he did not make clear to the country and to this House that he had more than that, that he had about £200,000 more than that profit out of the very taxation that the previous Administration had imposed on this country. His colleagues went around the country shedding crocodile tears over the condition of agriculture for the last couple of years. Three years ago the Minister for Education, in long and wordy letters to the Carlow Nationalist, gave the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party on this matter of derating. Because I had another engagement to-day, and had to come direct here from that engagement I have not those letters, but I will be able to quote them before the close of the debate on this motion. If the Minister for Education has to eat his words I hope he will eat them to the accompaniment of more courteous language than he used in writing those letters.
Now we come on a little further in last year, and the President, in effect, said to the country: "Those people who took up the Treaty and worked it let down the farmers of this country by agreeing to pay a tribute of £5,000,000 to England, but we will not pay that tribute any longer." The President is a mathematician. I have been only a student of mathematics; I have never been a professor of mathematics. If the President's knowledge of mathematics is to be measured by the deductions which can be made from his public utterances when he tries to fool the people of this country into believing that under his Administration this tribute, as he calls it, of £5,000,000 to England is not being paid, then the President should go back and start studying rather than professing mathematics. We have all been in the firing-line of agriculture. To use a picturesque phrase of the President himself, we farmers who have been in the front trenches in this economic war are getting nearly tired of it. We have come out of the trenches; we have come over the top; and we are going to advance, not to recede, in spite of the President's Coercion Acts. Let him remember that the day of back-room politics in this country has gone. We are going to defend our rights, our homes, the homes of our children and the homes of our ancestors in this country against any scheming politicians, whether those politicians invoke Coercion Acts or whether they do not. The people of this country are not going to be fooled by professional politicians for ever. The Front Bench is beginning to recognise that the man behind the plough, the man in the factory, the man behind the counter, the man who is working, is the man who is running this country, and that on him the future of this country must depend. If he stops working, the jobs of the professional politicians will become very precarious; but he has not made up his mind to stop working, neither has he nor any self-respecting citizen of this country, in working out their salvation, made any decision or organised any association to disobey the law of this country. We will leave that to those professional politicians who challenged the will of the people in this country and are sufficiently hypocritical now to come out as the champions of the will of the majority— people who never respected the majority in this country, and would not respect it now only that they think they have it for the time being. The majority in this country wanted derating. They were told: "Give us your votes and we will give it to you. We will give you derating"; but they did not get derating when they gave their votes. They got the gall and wormwood so dear to the heart of the President. He may smile, but the honest farmer who wants to pay his way and cannot pay it, and who gets nothing from President de Valera but coercion, cannot smile to-day. He has never drawn a salary out of politics. He has had to work for his living. Those people can smile who have done better in politics than they ever did or were able to do in their professions.
We saw the 1st July coming last year, and we saw a tariff of 20 per cent. put on agricultural produce going into England. The people were told: "Do not sell your stock. This is only a passing thing. We will win." About the month of August our enterprising Minister for Agriculture stated at a public meeting "Not only will we win but we have won." He said that England was crawling to us. Have we won? No, but another 20 per cent. was put on. The people who were told to hold out in the month of July held out to have another 20 per cent. clapped on. Of course we have flippant loud speakers coming in here saying that all the evil forebodings of the Opposition Party have not fructified. A gentleman of leisure who hailed over here from Liverpool can come in and dance around on those benches opposite, and talk lightly of the sufferings of the people of this country, but he will not trust even his little bank account in this country.
