If you have been beating a man on the head with a bludgeon for half an hour, and then leave off, there is no sense in saying to him: "There, I have given over bludgeoning you.

Why on earth don't you get up, and skip about like me ?" If you have been robbing a man's till for ten years, and then decide--by the way you have not yet decided--to leave off, there is no sense in saying to him: "Why the devil are you always hard up?
Look at me doing the same sort of business as you on absolutely equal terms, and I'm able to keep two motor-cars and six servants." But that is precisely what is said to us.
You are eternally expecting from Ireland new miracles of renaissance.
But although she does possess recuperative powers, hardly to be paralleled, even she must have time to slough the corruptions of the past.

You cannot, as some Englishmen imagine, cancel six centuries before breakfast.

Your Penal Laws, for instance, have been long since struck out of the Statute Book, but they have not yet been eliminated from social habitudes or from certain areas of commercial life.
You began to tax Ireland beyond her capacity in 1801, and you are still overtaxing her.

In the interval you withdraw from her economic life a tribute of not less than L325,000,000.