Almost every misfortune which Ireland
has suffered is directly traceable to this cause. In spite of this, it
is now seriously proposed to subject her once again to the disadvantages
of political separation, and that on the very eve of an inevitable
change of economic policy, which, while it would restore real vitality
and purpose to political union, would also once more intensify all the
injury which economic disunion has inflicted upon Ireland in the past.
In the long constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century her
position as a separate political unit made Ireland a convenient
instrument of Stuart policy against the English Parliament. Cromwell,
with true insight, solved the difficulty by legislative union with
England. But his work was undone at the Restoration, and for another 122
years Ireland remained outside the Union as a separate and subordinate
state. Her economic position was that of a Colony, as Colonies were then
administered. But it was that of a "least favoured Colony." This was
due, in part, to a real fear of Ireland as a danger to British
constitutional liberty and British Protestantism[86] which long
survived the occasion which has seemed to justify it.
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