THE UNION CENTURY
As against these five centuries, we have one century of Irish rule
under a united Parliament--1800 to 1911. One against five. But as the
one is more recent, we have here not a bad provision of material for an
answer to the question: "Which has proved in the past the best way of
governing Ireland--Union or Home Rule?"
In regard to the century of Union, the record lies before us, open and
palpable, a tale of disaster and tragedy almost without parallel in the
modern history of the world. We see in the statistics of Irish
population, of Irish disease, of Irish poverty during the nineteenth
century[60] a black picture of material decay that literally "cries to
Heaven" for redress.
Side by side with these statistics, too, we have others to clinch the
evidence which traces the cause to the Act of Union. For the nineteenth
century was no century of decay. On the contrary, in almost every other
Western country, and especially in countries of the same racial and
religious fusion--in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in
the British Colonies--the nineteenth century was a period of rising
population, advancing commerce, and abounding prosperity.
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