Let the Senator read the speech and then repeat that that would require imagination. The Minister made a definite reference to democracy; and it is conceivable that you cannot get rid of unemployment altogether unless you actually order your unemployed man to do this or that work, at this or that wage, and in this or that place. I hope it is not true, but it is conceivable, and, so far as I know, no other complete solution of unemployment has been found, and it is for every one of us to consider whether the remedy is not worse than the disease.
During the past eight years, since this Government came into office, we have been very far indeed from adhering to these doctrines of the Manchester School about which we hear so much. Senator Cummins says they were brought in for our destruction at the time of the Act of Union, for the purpose of enslaving this country and ensuring that we should be only a pastoral community. So far as I am aware, the Manchester School did not come into existence at all for a quarter of a century or more after the passing of the Act of Union. In any case, whether or not it was the policy of the British to force pastoralism on us, I do suggest that their monetary system was quite irrelevant to it. They may have taken other measures; I do not propose to take time going into that. But there was nothing in the English monetary system or currency that turned this country into a pastoral country, and it is quite absurd to suggest that there was.
Curiously enough, the first big success of the Manchester School was, I suppose, the abolition of the Corn Laws in, I think, 1846, and that occurred at a time when Ireland had reached really a greater depth of economic misery than it had ever seen. The politicians who were associated with the Manchester School, like Cobden and Bright, were very far indeed from being regarded as the champions of selfish monied interests. On the contrary, they were regarded as the champions of the workingman, attacking selfish monied interests which were supporting tariffs and other restrictions that were supposed to be reducing the standard of living for the poor. So that all this curious abuse of the Manchester School and of the people who are too much concerned with monied interests, and of the pro-English minds who have fastened pastoralism on this country and who did it somehow by means of the monetary system and are keeping it so by that means, creates a problem of psychology as to how Labour Senators have got themselves into such a muddled state of mind. The practice of imposing tariffs began before this Government came into office, and the practice of having generous social services began before this country ceased to form part of the United Kingdom. Within our own recollection we have only to take our minds back to the time when old age pensions were started to realise how far it is from being true that even the British were imposing upon us the doctrines of the Manchester School and how far it is from being true that even the British legislature showed a complete lack of sympathy with the poverty and suffering of the small man.
It is indeed not so much the actual proposals of the Labour Party to which I object—although I do object to them and think them unsound—it is not so much the actual proposals, however, that make me indignant, as the propaganda by which these proposals are supported, propaganda that, I believe, has been doing a great deal of harm and will continue to do a great deal of harm unless they cease to be so absolutely reckless of the effects they are producing and, as it seems to me, so reckless of the truth, as they are at present.
It is quite untrue to say that anybody advocates a policy of "do nothing". We all want to do everything that can be done to increase the wealth of this country. I personally believe that any pennies that we can scrape together, over and above what we are spending already, should be spent on the development of agriculture, and that that would be more advantageous than spending it on afforestation, which cannot show results for 30 years or so.
I introduced a motion years ago in the Dáil urging the Government to establish demonstration farms throughout the country—an unpopular proposal, particularly at that time, because the economic war was in progress, and the Government did not quite see how they could make the farms pay, if they did establish them. But the proposal has been made by others, and it was mentioned here the other day by Senator Sir John Keane. I should like to mention it again. In that way, if you have money to spend, I think it would be well spent, because I believe with all my heart that the prospects of raising the standard of living and reducing unemployment in this country depend on making our agriculture more efficient, on getting more modern methods, more skill, more energy and more enthusiasm into it.
It is because all this talk of miracles which could be brought about by some monetary manipulation distracts people from the things that really can do good that I think it is so harmful. For one reason or another, the people of this country have too long had their minds distracted from the question of efficiency. It has been inevitable for political reasons. There has nearly always been some political opponent to go for, and to take property from— perhaps quite rightly, but nevertheless to take it from him. It was the landlords in the old days; it was the ranchers afterwards, and it was the British Government in respect of the Land Annuities, and so forth. It may be that the case was perfectly sound and just—I am not entering into that—in all this, but the necessary psychological result upon the individual farmer has been that he is less inclined to think of what could be achieved by greater efficiency than he is to think of getting his rights as against some other member of our community; and if we are to do any good at all, we have to get out of the habit of making villains of some particular class in the community, whether bankers, Senators or economists, as too many people are inclined to do.
Senator O Buachalla said very candidly that he had come to his present economic views only after distress and travail of spirit and that he came to them reluctantly, because, in the old days of Sinn Féin propaganda, Sinn Féin economics went along with Sinn Féin politics, and it was perhaps not very easy to discard the former and retain one's faith in the latter. I remember, some years ago, saying in the Dáil, in the presence of the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, that I had difficulty in believing that Sinn Féin economists had arrived at their views by hard work and sitting up at night with towels around their heads studying books of economics, and that I could not help thinking that they had adopted their economics because they fitted in with their politics. The Minister replied that the very reverse was the case. "We formed our economic views about this country first," he said, "and our political views were the necessary result." If so, one wonders what the mental state of the Minister is at the moment, because the days are past when he believed in the possibility of building up here what he called a storm-proof, self-sufficient system of economics. He sees realities now as well even as does the present Minister for Finance who, only a few years ago, so few years ago, was telling us that, in the economic war, we had whipped John Bull and that we could look forward to whipping him again in any other economic war on a future occasion. I wonder how that fits in with the maintenance of so many of our public and private investments in British securities, with the maintenance of the link with sterling, and how we could seriously set about the economic destruction of any country in which we had such an enormous stake as, in fact, we have. I do not say these things in order to be unpleasant, but because they pass through my mind and seem to me to have a certain relevance to the discussion.
I was going to conclude at that point, but I see that Senator O Buachalla has just arrived, and I am therefore tempted to make one additional remark arising out of something he said. He complained that I had spoken in a frivolous manner—perhaps, he even thought, in an offensive manner—about the Gaelic economic order. I did not drag the Gaelic economic order into this debate.
It was the complaint of Senator Lynch that the economic system under which we are living at present is non-Gaelic, and not only was the complaint made here by Senator Lynch, but it has been made hundreds of times down the country, and it is suggested that we ought to do revolutionary things in order to get back to the Gaelic economic order. I merely pointed out the obvious fact that any evidence we have as to Gaelic economic order is discouraging, and it is not surprising that that should be so, because the same applies to the economic order of neighbouring countries in the same epoch. There is really nothing to learn as to what our present course should be by studying Gaelic economics. It is not my desire to make any unnecessary sneers that would hurt anybody's feelings, or do any mischief to anybody's ideals. I think the people who are really responsible for causing sneers, when there are sneers, are the people who make ludicrous claims of that sort for the Gaelic world, that we can get enlightenment as to our economic problems from going back to Gaelic ideas of economics.
The Minister referred to the effect upon Partition of the severance of our currency from sterling. I think that is an important point, and I congratulate him upon having taken Partition into consideration in any one of our domestic problems, because, so far as I can recollect, it is the first time it has happened since this Government came into office. There have been many times when I, and others, have implored them to consider the effects on Partition of things they were proposing to do, but we had no success. Here, for once, the question of Partition has been raised by the Minister, and, though one might perhaps suspect that he might not have raised it if he had not been strongly against severing the link with sterling, anyway he has set a precedent which I hope may be followed when any measure comes up for consideration that might affect the possibility of unifying Ireland.