Page:England and Ireland (Mill).djvu/28

tries makes them far more fit to exist as one nation than as two. Not only are they more powerful for defence against a foreign enemy combined than separate, but, if separate, they would be a standing menace to one another. Parted at the present time and with their present feelings, the two islands would be, of all countries in Europe, those which would have the most hostile disposition towards one another. Too much bitter feeling still remains between England and the United States, more than eighty years after separation; and Ireland has suffered from England for many centuries, evils compared with which the greatest grievances of the Americans were, in all but their principle, insignificant. The persevering reciprocation of insults between English and American newspapers and public speakers has, before now, brought those two countries to the verge of a war; would there not be even more of this between countries still nearer neighbours, on the morrow of an unfriendly separation? In the perpetual state of irritated feeling thus kept up, trifles would become causes of quarrel. Disputes more or less serious, even collisions, would be for ever liable to occur. Ireland, therefore, besides having to defend herself against all other enemies, internal and external, without English help, would feel obliged to keep herself always armed and in readiness to fight England, An Irishman must have a very lofty idea of the resources of his country who thinks that this load upon the Irish taxpayer would be easily borne. A war- tax assessed upon the soil, for want of other taxable material, would be no small set-off against what the peasant would gain even by the entire cessation of rent. The burthen of the necessity of being always prepared for