"Mr. Gladstone may think he knows best, but here the unanimous opinion is that trade will be fatally injured. Ireland is no mean market for English goods, and the market will be closed because Ireland will have no money to spend. Go outside the manufacturing towns and what do you see? Chronic poverty. Manufacturers will remove to the Continent, to America--anywhere else--leaving the peasantry only. The prospective taxes are alarming. We know what would be one of the very first acts of a Dublin Parliament. They would curry favour with the poor, the lazy districts, by an equalisation of the poor rate. In Derry, where everybody works for his bread, the rate is about sixpence in the pound. There are districts where it runs to ten shillings in the pound. The wealthy traders, the capitalists, the manufacturers of the North will have to pay for the loafers of the South. The big men would gather up their goods and chattels and clear out. There are other reasons for this course." Here Mr. Greer made the inevitable statement that Englishmen out of Ireland did not understand the question; and another large manufacturer chipped in with:-- "Leave us alone, and we get on admirably. There is no intolerance; everybody lives comfortably with his neighbour. But pass the bill and what happens? The Catholic employes would become unmanageable, would begin to kick over the traces, would want to dictate terms, would attempt to dominate the Protestant section, which would rebel, and trouble would ensue. They would not work together. It is impracticable to say: Employ one faith only and Home Rule means that Catholicism is to hold the sway. The Nationalist leaders foster this spirit, otherwise there would be no Home Rule. The workpeople would act as directed by the priest, even in matters connected with employment. You have no idea what that means to us. It means ruin. The people do not know their own mind, and their ignorance is amazing. My porter says that when the bill becomes law, which will take place in one month from date, he will have a situation in Dublin at a thousand a year, and both he and others sincerely believe in such a changed state of things for Catholics alone." I went over Welch, Margetson's works, a wonderful place, where were hundreds of women, clean and well-dressed, working at the various departments of shirt-making. The highest class of mill hands I ever saw, working in large and well-ventilated rooms, many getting a pound a week. Another firm over the way employs one thousand five hundred more. And according to the best authority, that of the owners, all this is to leave the country when Ireland gets Home Rule.