How do you clean a slate except by liquidating the debts of which it keeps the record?
The late Vicomte de Vogue wrote an admirable novel, "Les Morts qui Parlent." The dead are always speaking; you cannot stop their strong eloquence with a mouthful of clay.

The "business man" thinks no doubt that the Napoleonic War is no more than Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba.

But he pays annual tribute to it, for he has to make annual provision for the L600,000,000 which it added to the National Debt.

And just as Mr Pitt's foreign policy is in that respect a living reality of our own time, so also, but in a much graver form, are the past depredations and ineptitudes of Unionism living realities in the present economy of Ireland.
The ruling fallacy of the English mind on these matters consists in the assumption that the mere repeal of an old oppression restores a people to the _status quo ante_.

In the case of Ireland the old oppressions have not been repealed except in two or three points, but even if they had been wholly cancelled it would be absurd to expect immediate recovery from their effects.