Miss Murray's History of the Commercial and Financial Relations between England and Ireland is the result of her investigations since her election to a research studentship at the London School of Economics. The statutes of the University of London provide that students of other approved Universities who have passed the examinations required for a degree may present themselves for the doctorate after a period of not less than two years spent in research as ‘Internal Students’ of the University, and Miss Murray's distinguished career at Girton College, Cambridge, was an admirable qualification both for the grant of this privilege and for the special work which she selected as the subject of her thesis. She was one of the two women students who were the first to obtain the doctorate in the Faculty of Economics and Political Science. I am the more pleased to contribute a preface to her work because I have long believed that the difficulties of Ireland are due to economic rather than religious or political causes, though in times past, at any rate, the reaction of the latter on the economic development of Ireland
The fact that Miss Murray's work won the approval of two such high authorities on the subject of it as Sir Robert Giffen and Prof. C. F. Bastable is sufficient evidence of its value. She has not only made use of the available materials, both books and documents, which are in print, but she has incorporated the results of much original research amongst English and Irish manuscript sources. Most of the difficulties, of an economic character, in the financial relations between England and Ireland arise from the differences of economic structure and organisation between the two countries. If Ireland were a highly-organised, populous, manufacturing country, the present fiscal system would probably work out no worse than it does in the urban districts of Great Britain. But whatever be the virtues or the demerits of that system, it was certainly not framed with any reference to the economic conditions which prevail in Ireland. In order to
A purely ‘national’ policy, that is a policy directed solely to the development of Ireland considered as a separate entity, has never been possible, and is never likely to be possible. But, historically speaking, there were two lines of development, either of which would probably have been more favourable to Ireland than the one actually followed. It is not unusual to attribute the restraints on Irish trade, described by Miss Murray, to the mercantile system. That is no doubt true in the sense that the expedients adopted in the case of Ireland fall into line, so far as their general features are concerned, with other wellknown measures of the mercantilist régime. But it will be seen from Miss Murray's history that Ireland was in a less favourable position than that of an English colony. If Ireland could have been treated as a colony in the earlier period reviewed by Miss Murray it would have occupied no unworthy place in the general scheme of British policy, and would no doubt have attained considerable wealth and prosperity. The second course favourable to Irish development would have been to adopt, from the first, a policy of consolidation with England. That neither of these courses was followed was