NEWS OF THE WEEK.
IN a speech at Arklow on Thursday week, on which we have commented more at length in another column, Mr. Parnell explained how he had persuaded the Dublin Corporation not to buy in the cheapest market their stone for the paving of Dublin streets, but to encourage native industry by buying from his own quarries stone dearer than the Welsh quarry- owners professed themselves willing to supply. And Mr. Parnell had been so impressed by this particular result of a policy of Protection, that he generalised upon it, and stated the drift of his generalisation with a truly Bismarckian self- confidence. " It is my firm belief," he said, " that it will be impossible for us to keep the great portion of the labouring classes at home and in comfort without protection to Irish industries." He might just as well have said that it would be impossible to keep the labouring classes at home and in comfort without contriving that the sum-total of all Irish wages should command fewer comforts, even in proportion to their amount, than before, and also that they should dwindle in positive bulk. If Mr. Parnell hopes to make Ireland more prosperous by a high Pro- tective tariff, he is not only applying to Ireland a policy which has failed disastrously in the great United States, where pro- tection from the foreigner means comparatively little—so vast is the continent within which there is perfect Free-trade—but he is applying it to a small and poor country, in which any blunder of that kind will speedily take effect in penury and famine. First rent asunder by Home-rule, and then hermetically sealed from all the world by a policy of Protection, Ireland would indeed soon rue the blighting influence of Mr. Parnell's ascendancy.
