THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

The financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland have been a subject, at intervals of time, no doubt, of strong controversy during a whole century. I shall not harp on the saying of Johnson to an Irish friend, ‘Avoid a Union with England, she will only rob you;’ but, in the opinion of well-informed Irishmen, the fiscal treatment of Ireland, since 1800-01, strikingly illustrates the significant remark of Burke, ‘When any community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connection is, the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior, which, in all matters of controversy, will probably decide in its own favour.’ There is no reason to impeach the good faith of Pitt and Castlereagh; but the financial arrangements they made for Ireland, when the Union became law, were denounced by the most distinguished Irishmen of the day; these imposed on Ireland an overwhelming burden, and, in fact, reduced her to the very edge of bankruptcy. A compromise was effected in 1816-17; this has been described as a generous boon to Ireland; but it was at best a slight relief from injustice; and it weakened securities she had against fiscal exaction, while it involved her in liabilities which, if remote, were not the less possible. It is a most significant fact that Peel, who, as Chief Secretary from 1812 to 1818, was familiar with the economic state of Ireland, refused, though under the strongest inducements, to apply to Ireland the fiscal charges extended to her by one of his brilliant successors; the most sagacious financier of the nineteenth century played, in this matter, a very different part from the most impulsive and not the least unscrupulous. In 1853, and from thence in other years, Mr. Gladstone, in order to carry out a policy distinctly opposed to many Irish interests, subjected Ireland to a sudden and heavy load of taxation, exactly at the time when, for the plainest reasons, she ought to have been exempted from it; from that day to this, Irishmen, who understand the question, are agreed that this was gross, nay, cruel, injustice. The whole subject of British and Irish financial relations was sent by Mr. Gladstone to a Commission in 1893, here following the example of Mr. Goschen; a careful inquiry was held during many months; the Report of the Commission was startling and important in the extreme. This tribunal, mainly composed of eminent English experts, announced, and that almost with one voice, that Ireland was being enormously overtaxed, and had been for upwards of forty years; and it plainly intimated that a remedy for this wrong should be found. No real answer has been made to this remarkable judgment; the attempts at answers that have been made are nearly all mere trifling; Lord Salisbury’s Government evidently believes that an answer is not possible; it promised to appoint another Commission to investigate certain parts of the subject; years have passed, and it has not performed its promise. Meanwhile, even amidst the hurly-burly of Irish politics, Irishmen of all parties have united in a demand for redress; and if the demand is not pressed with extreme vehemence, it is sustained by all that is best in Irish opinion. It is obviously unwise, and it may become dangerous, to continue to ignore such a claim; in any event the financial relations of the Three Kingdoms are not the least important of ‘Present Irish Questions;’ I shall briefly examine it in this chapter.

It is unnecessary to dwell on the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland before 1782 and the Union. England held the position of an absolutely dominant State before 1782, Ireland that of a conquered and despised colony; Ireland was under the control of the British Parliament, and was governed by English officials supreme at the Castle. Ireland was excluded from the foreign and colonial trade of Great Britain; her agriculture and manufactures were half destroyed by the selfish jealousy and greed of her imperious neighbour. She contributed, on the other hand, nothing to the treasury of the ruling power; she had little or no part in British wars, or in building up the edifice of the Empire, except through her soldiers in the British army; she was free from British debt and from British taxation. In these circumstances, grievous as was the incubus of Protestant ascendency upon the land, it is remarkable what material progress she made; her Parliament, though little more than a local vestry, unquestionably promoted her material welfare; she was very lightly taxed, and was free from debt for many years. She was still so completely distinct from Great Britain, that it was not until 1769 that her Parliament agreed that 15,000 men, of whom 12,000 were to remain in Ireland, should be enrolled for the defence of the State; before that time, she was only obliged to maintain a small British force within her borders. After a partial relaxation of the restraints on her commerce caused by the stress of the American War, and by the famous volunteer movement, Ireland obtained legislative independence in 1782; she ceased to be subject to the British Parliament, and to fill the position of a degraded colony; she became, in theory at least, an independent State in many respects. Her Parliament was all but sovereign in name; Ireland was now united to Great Britain only by the link of the Crown; by an executive always despatched from Downing Street; and, it must be added, by the corruption of her Houses of Lords and Commons. She was thus more than ever a distinct country; in fact, most British statesmen had soon perceived that the celebrated settlement of 1782 greatly weakened her old connection with England. She advanced, however, markedly in prosperity for many years, until the French Revolution arrested this; her debt was little more than £2,000,000 for a long time, her taxation only about £1,000,000. But by the close of the eighteenth century these figures had been disastrously changed; her debt had risen to upwards of £28,000,000, her taxation to about £2,500,000. This great increase had been partly caused by the costly expenditure of her transformed Parliament, which had spent considerable sums on public works, and on economic experiments of different kinds; but five-sixths of it was probably caused by the enormous charge incurred by the Rebellion of 1798—one of the most woeful tragedies of Irish history—and by the suppression of that ill-starred movement.[151]

The Rebellion led at once to the Union; it precipitated what had perhaps become a necessity of State. The great measure of Pitt was badly designed, and was, moreover, tainted by a grave breach of faith; it was only what was called a ‘Protestant Union,’ that is, it rested upon false and narrow foundations; it deceived Catholic Ireland, and did her gross wrong; above all, it did not effect its main object, and incorporate the lesser with the more powerful country. It left Ireland, hitherto completely distinct, still, to a very considerable extent, a distinct State; she retained a separate Government and Administration, separate Courts of Justice, a separate Exchequer for many years; this shadow of separation, as Foster, one of her ablest worthies, foretold, would give a demand for separation substance.[152] The financial arrangements between Great Britain and Ireland were practically altogether the work of Pitt. A disciple of Adam Smith, the minister’s wish was to ‘assimilate the two countries in finance;’ to place both under the same fiscal system, to make taxation in both uniform. But in 1800, the National Debt of Great Britain was more than £446,000,000, and her taxation was about £3 a head; the National Debt of Ireland, we have seen, was some £28,000,000, and her taxation by the head not more than 10s.; this immense inequality made ‘assimilation in finance’ impossible. Besides, Pitt, as a matter of course, knew that Great Britain was a very rich country, and Ireland perhaps the poorest in Europe; he was too great a financier to accept the false and shallow theory that, as between two communities wholly unequal in wealth, equal taxes were really equal burdens, and could be just; he had emphatically remarked in 1785, when his celebrated ‘Commercial Propositions’ were opposed by the selfish monopolies of British commerce, ‘If one country exceeded another in wealth, population, and established commerce in a proportion of two to one, he was nearly convinced that that country would be able to bear near ten times the burden that the other would be equal to.’[153] It had become necessary, therefore, at the time of the Union, to place the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland on a basis that had nothing in common with uniformity of taxation, and a common fiscal system; ‘assimilation in finance’ was for the present to be indefinitely postponed.

The financial settlement made at the Union distinctly embodied these principles, and was carried by Castlereagh through the Irish Parliament, by what methods history records with shame. Like Pitt, the Chief Secretary looked forward to a time when Great Britain and Ireland might be under the same fiscal system; but at this juncture, this consummation was, he acknowledged, hopeless. Ireland was, financially, to remain a separate country; she was to have a separate exchequer and separate taxes; her National Debt was to be kept distinct from that of Great Britain. She was to furnish only a contribution to the State; and Castlereagh declared, over and over again, that this contribution was to be only in proportion to her means, and that in no event was she to be unduly taxed. ‘The great point to be ascertained is the best criterion that can be found of the relative means of the two countries, in order to fix the relative proportions of their contributions.... As to the future, it is expected that the two countries will move forward together, and unite with regard to their expenses in the measure of their relative abilities.’ By a comparison made between British and Irish imports and exports, and between the values of certain commodities, Castlereagh came to the conclusion that the contributions which Great Britain and Ireland ought to be expected to make for the general support and administration of the State, should be, respectively, fifteen- and two-seventeenths, that is, Great Britain was to pay about 88 per cent., and Ireland about 12 per cent. of the sum total. This proportion was to be made liable to revision at the end of twenty years; for this provision, Castlereagh remarked, gave ‘Ireland the utmost possible security that she cannot be taxed beyond the measure of her comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contributions must ever correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity;’ and then followed arrangements which undoubtedly had the ‘assimilation of Great Britain and Ireland in finance’ remotely in view; but subject to limitations that would preserve for Ireland her fiscal rights, and would secure her from taxation beyond her means, and unjust. It was proposed that if, at some future time, the debts of both countries should be discharged, or if their debts and their contributions were in the same proportion, Great Britain and Ireland might be ‘assimilated in finance,’ and placed under the same fiscal system; but this was to be on two express conditions, that the circumstances of the two countries should admit of this change, and that, in any case, should the change be made, Ireland—as was the case of Scotland when her Union took place-should have the benefit of such ‘exemptions and abatements’ of taxation as might be deemed proper, and the circumstances of the situation might allow. The meaning of the technical words, ‘exemptions and abatements,’ interpreted of late years in a pettifogging sense, was fully recognised at the time, and for a long subsequent period, indeed, has been recognised to this day by most of our leading statesmen, namely, that Ireland was not to be taxed unfairly or beyond her resources, as Castlereagh had repeatedly promised.[154]

The Opposition in the Irish Parliament had many able lawyers—the names of Saurin, of Plunket, of Bushe are still known to fame; it is to be regretted, perhaps, that these powerful minds did not examine with more jealousy the conditions under which Great Britain and Ireland might be ‘assimilated in finance,’ distant as the contingency appeared to be; did not criticise more sharply words that might be wrested from their accepted sense; and trusted too much to Castlereagh’s phrases. But the attention of the Opposition was rather directed to the Union in its political than in its financial aspect; it rather denounced the attempt to destroy the settlement of 1782 than scrutinised the terms of the fiscal system to be imposed on Ireland, at least, as these were concerned with the future. The arrangements, nevertheless, by which Ireland was to make the contribution of the two-seventeenths were fiercely assailed in both the Houses in College Green; Foster described the calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh as utterly false, and declared that the charge to be borne by Ireland was much too large; Grattan echoed this opinion in characteristic language: ‘Though I do not think the means of this country are unequal to any necessary expense, yet I do think they are inadequate to that contributory expense which the Union stipulates.... The attempt will exhaust the country, at the same time that it enslaves her. Colour it as you please, Ireland will pay more than she is able. Considering these the terms of the Union so far as they relate to revenue, they amount to a continuation of the double establishment, an increase of the separate establishment, and a military government, with a prospect of soon succeeding to the full taxes of England.’[155] The Opposition, too, in the Irish House of Commons loudly protested: ‘Your Majesty’s faithful Commons are satisfied that this calculation is extremely erroneous; and that on a just and fair inquiry into the comparative means of each country, the Kingdom ought not, and is not able to contribute anything like that proportion.’[156] And twenty Irish peers placed this emphatic protest on record; I have space for a few sentences only: ‘Under such circumstances, it appears to us that if this Kingdom should take upon herself irrevocably the payment of two-seventeenths of these expenses, she will not have means to perform her engagements unless by charging her landed property with 12s. or 13s. in the pound; it must end in the draining from her her last guinea, in totally annihilating her trade for want of capital, in rendering the taxes unproductive, and consequently in finally putting her in a state of bankruptcy. We think ourselves called upon to protest against a measure so ruinous to our country, and to place the responsibility of its consequences upon such persons as have brought it forward and supported it.’[157]

The Treaty of Union left Ireland, financially, still a separate country, paying a fixed contribution for the uses of the State. The great war with France soon broke out again; England was involved with Napoleon in a life-and-death struggle; her fiscal resources were strained to the utmost; her expenditure became prodigious for a series of years. In these circumstances, the debt of Ireland rose from £28,000,000 to upwards of £112,000,000; and her taxation from about £2,500,000 to about £4,500,000; while the debt of Great Britain advanced from some £446,000,000 to some £737,000,000, and her taxation from some £24,000,000 to £54,000,000; the taxation of Ireland being by the head about £1 in 1816, that of Great Britain being about £5, the figures sixteen years before being 10s. and £3. The immense increase in the debt of Ireland, much greater in proportion than that of Great Britain, was certainly due to a large extent to the fact—and this was frankly admitted by Grattan—that the poorer country could not keep pace with the richer in the gigantic charges of the war; the case, it has justly been remarked, may be compared to a case of this kind: ‘If one man, A, who has been living at the rate of £100 per annum, arranges to keep house with another man, B, who has for some time been living at the rate of £700 per annum, and to spend £1 for every £7 which B spends, then so long as B continues to live at the same rate as before, the expenses of A will not be increased. But if B begins to live at the rate of £2100 a year, A will have to spend £300 a year, and if his means are not sufficient for this, he must become bankrupt.’[158] Allowing, nevertheless, for all this, it is not the less certain that the calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh were utterly falsified by the event, and that the warnings of Foster, Grattan, and other well-informed Irishmen, besides the protests made in the Irish Parliament, were verified to the fullest extent; as has been remarked by a distinguished English expert, ‘The calculations of Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh, the ministers who promoted the Union, and who declared that Ireland would be able to pay, and ought to pay, two-seventeenths of the joint expenses of the United Kingdom, turned out to be mistaken, and the opinions of Mr. Grattan, Mr. Foster, and other Irish members, who denied that she would be able to contribute so large a proportion, are proved by the event to have been well founded.’[159]

This contrast, it is hardly necessary to say, to persons acquainted with Irish history, is only one of the innumerable proofs of the ignorance of Ireland too common to British statesmen, and of their too common disregard of the best Irish opinion. In 1815-16, at the close of the war, Ireland was financially in a bankrupt condition; she could not pay the interest on her debt; she could not bear the weight of further taxation; she was exhausted and sucked dry by fiscal injustice. Her social state, too, had become very alarming; her population had rapidly increased, and, mainly depending on the frail potato, was already becoming an incubus on the land; the collapse of the high war prices had caused a sudden fall in rents and the wages of labour; there was general distress in several counties, and Whiteboy and agrarian disorder widely prevailed. The financial position of Ireland was necessarily taken up by Parliament; a Committee of the House of Commons was selected to report upon it. By this time one of the contingencies had taken place for the possible ‘assimilation in finance’ with Great Britain of the much weaker country; the contribution of Ireland, compared with her debt, was even in less proportion than the contribution of Great Britain to her own; she had been left far behind in the effort to pay her way. In this position of affairs the Committee made its report, after a long and careful examination of the case; the House of Commons passed these resolutions in May, 1816: ‘That it is the opinion of this Committee that the values of the respective debts of Great Britain and Ireland, estimated according to the provisions of the Acts of Union, have been, at a period subsequent to these Acts, in the same proportion to each other (within one-hundredth part of the said value), with the respective contributions of each country respectively, towards the annual expenditure of the United Kingdom; and that the respective circumstances of the two countries will henceforth admit of their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed upon the same articles upon each, to the future expenditure of the United Kingdom; subject only to such particular exemptions and abatements in Ireland and in Scotland as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand; and that it is no longer necessary to regulate the contribution of the two countries according to any specific proportion, or according to the rules prescribed by the Acts of Union, with respect to such proportions. That it is the opinion of this Committee, that it is expedient that all expenses henceforth to be incurred, together with the interest and charges of all debts hitherto contracted, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes to be imposed on the same articles in each country; and that from time to time, as circumstances may require, such taxes should be imposed and applied accordingly, subject only to such exemptions and abatements in Ireland and Scotland as circumstances may appear to demand. That it is the opinion of this Committee that such legislative measures should be adopted as may be necessary to carry into further effect the purposes of the said Acts of Union, by consolidating the public revenues of Great Britain and Ireland into one fund, and applying the same to the general services of the United Kingdom.’[160]

These resolutions were partly embodied in an Act which received the Royal assent in June, 1816. By this law the separate exchequer of Ireland was shut up; there was to be but one exchequer for the Three Kingdoms; all the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were thrown into a general fund to be applied to the requirements of the State; the separate debt of Ireland was fused into that of Great Britain, the two making a common National Debt. By these means Ireland was relieved from an intolerable load of debt; but those who contend that an immense boon was thus conferred on her, only illustrate the aphorism of Burke referred to before; the matter was decided by the opinion of the dominant power. Ireland, no doubt, was set free from an overwhelming burden; but the burden was one improperly cast on her by the Union; the relief was only a small redress of injustice.[161] On the other hand, the arrangements of 1816 abolished the contribution of the two-seventeenths, and made Ireland less a separate country, financially, than she had been before; the resolutions of the House of Commons did not all become law, but they at least declared that she might become ‘assimilated in finance’ to Great Britain at a convenient time, and thus diminished her security against undue taxation; and the amalgamation of her debt with that of Great Britain made her subject, at least conceivably, to a gigantic charge, for which she was not in any way liable. The compromise, however, effected at this time, rather contemplated the relief of Ireland from existing debt than her ultimate ‘assimilation in finance to Great Britain,’ and the extension to both countries of the same fiscal system. For many years after 1816 Ireland remained, financially, completely distinct from Great Britain, and under a scheme of taxation altogether different. Nor is the reason difficult to seek; she was declared entitled, by the resolutions before mentioned, to the ‘exemptions and abatements’ secured to her by the Treaty of Union; and the Parliament of that day respected the treaty, interpreting these terms in their true sense, that Ireland was not to be taxed beyond her means. Her fiscal wrongs, besides, from 1800 to 1816, were still fresh in the minds of statesmen; these did not wish to repeat injustice; above all, she had many representatives of real weight at Westminster—Grattan was a tower of strength in himself, and he had very able followers; these men would certainly have fiercely resented attempts to impair the financial rights of their country.

The fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland, still altogether distinct, continued nearly on this footing for a series of years. Great Britain was gradually relieved from taxation peculiar to herself, amounting to very considerable sums; Ireland was not relieved in the same proportion; but this was hardly a real grievance; the taxation of Great Britain during the war had been enormously higher than that of Ireland. In 1819-20 the charge on Great Britain, which had been about £5 per head, had been reduced to £3 13s.; that on Ireland, which had been about £1 a head, had been reduced to 15s. 5d. There seems to have been little to complain of in these figures. Some steps, however, but tentative only, were made by degrees in ‘assimilating the two countries in finance,’ according to the resolutions of 1816; the duties on tea were made equal for the Three Kingdoms, and the duties on tobacco, as early as 1819; but it deserves special notice that this policy was angrily opposed by many Irishmen in the House of Commons, the most conspicuous of these being Sir John Newport, a real master of Irish finance, who had been Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in 1806-07. Still, notwithstanding innovations like these, the fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland remained substantially distinct for a long period; this was notably made manifest as late as 1842. At this time the population of England was in an alarming state; the Chartist agitation was in full swing; British commerce was half strangled by heavy duties on foreign imports; the corn laws crippled and burdened industry. Peel was at the head of his great Ministry; he began to carry into effect the policy of free trade, inaugurated by Pitt, but unhappily delayed; in order to accomplish this he had to diminish or get rid of the charges on foreign imports, and generally to substitute direct for indirect taxation. He was under a strong temptation to ‘assimilate Great Britain and Ireland in finance;’ but he had been a friend and colleague of Castlereagh; he understood the true import of the Treaty of Union; above all, he knew Ireland well for an Englishman; he had practically been her ruler for nearly six years. In these circumstances he imposed the income tax on Great Britain as an equivalent for many indirect taxes; but he pointedly abstained from extending the tax to Ireland; he felt that this would be an act of financial wrong; and though he increased for a short time the duty on Irish spirits, he took off the increase within a few months. The only ‘assimilation in finance’ he effected was to make the stamp duties in Great Britain and Ireland equal, and this was rather a legal than an economic reform.

The life of the great minister was prematurely cut short; time brought with it its changes on its wings. The statesman who had living traditions of the Union and its finance had passed away; O’Connell had disappeared from the scene; the representation of Ireland had fallen into a deplorable state. Meanwhile the free trade policy of Peel had achieved great results in England and Scotland; free trade had given an immense impulse to our manufactures and our foreign commerce; the repeal of the corn laws had wonderfully quickened industry, and had been a magnificent boon to the mass of the people; the prosperity of Great Britain was advancing by leaps and bounds. The development of free trade was the object of nearly all our statesmen; to accomplish this it was essential still further to lessen or to abolish the duties on foreign imports, and to let in the raw materials of manufactures free; indirect taxation was still further to give place to direct. In 1853, and during part of the subsequent period, our finances were in the hands of a minister whose impulsive nature was upheld by a most imperious will, and who, whatever was his policy, seldom stuck at trifles. Apparently without mature reflection, and, it is to be hoped, with little knowledge of the facts of the case, Mr. Gladstone, setting the example of Peel at nought, suddenly subjected Ireland to the income tax, and began to raise the duties on Irish spirits; by 1860 these duties had been more than trebled; and the taxation of Ireland had been increased by upwards of two millions sterling. And what were the circumstances, during a large part of this period, of the country on which this enormous burden had been laid? Ireland, no doubt, had begun to revive from the effects of the catastrophe of 1845-47; but, compared with Great Britain, she was miserably poor; and the Great Famine had shaken her social structure to its base. Two millions of her population had fled from their homes into exile; a large part of the upper and of the middle classes had been involved in ruin; whole tracts of her lands were derelict wastes; her local taxation was exceedingly high. The imposition of this load of taxation on a country in such a condition, unjustifiable in the abstract, and from every point of view, was, in the existing position of affairs, an act of cruel wrong; no wonder even one of Mr. Gladstone’s colleagues has remarked, measured as is his language, ‘We think that if the House of Commons, in the period 1853 to 1860, when the great enhancement of taxation took place, had fully considered the circumstances of Ireland, they would not have felt themselves justified in increasing the taxation of that country by means of the income tax and the equalisation of the spirit duties.’[162] At this time, in a word, the future Solon of Home Rule proved himself to be the merciless Draco of Irish finance.

This great increase of taxation, to a considerable extent, ‘assimilated Ireland to Great Britain in finance;’ placed the two countries under nearly the same fiscal system; made the taxes of each not far from equal. This assimilation, however, was still by no means complete—indeed, is not complete to the present day; Ireland has still fiscal privileges under the Treaty of Union; and this should be carefully borne in mind. Mr. Gladstone, moreover, when he made this increase, acknowledged that Ireland remained a distinct country, entitled to immunities of her own; when he made her liable to the income tax, he cancelled a debt of £4,000,000 which he professed she owed; and if this was an illusory pretence, for her liability for this reason was more than doubtful, and the income tax she has since paid has exceeded £23,000,000, still he distinctly admitted the principle—indeed, it has always been admitted by statesmen worthy of the name. The enormous new burdens imposed on Ireland, from 1853 to 1860, provoked widespread and profound discontent; a Parliamentary inquiry was conceded; a Committee of the House of Commons went into the subject in 1863-64. But the representation of Ireland, I have said, was feeble; her complaints were stifled by the arts of the treasury; the arguments of her members were overborne by specious but utterly false sophistry; the inquiry came to nothing as regards her interests. The question remained in abeyance for years; the Irish reforms of Mr. Gladstone, from 1869 to 1873, the troubles caused by the Land and the National Leagues, and the Home Rule agitation that followed, turned public attention away from the subject; but it was not forgotten by well-informed Irishmen; two real economists, Butt and Judge Longfield, insisted that Ireland had here a grievance; and this was the opinion of several independent gentlemen, survivors of the illustrious school of Grattan. At last Mr. Goschen, perhaps moved by remonstrances from Ireland being urged again, appointed a Committee of the House of Commons to examine into, and to report upon, ‘the equity of the financial relations in regard to the resources and the population of the Three Kingdoms;’ Mr. Gladstone, in 1893, recurred to the subject, which, rather unaccountably, had been let drop. He directed a Commission of great authority, composed for the most part of expert Englishmen, and presided over by the late Mr. Childers, a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Gladstone, to inquire thoroughly into the whole question of the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland, and fully to set forth the conclusions they should form. The scope of the investigation was to include the history of the subject since the Union; a consideration of the financial resources of Great Britain and Ireland regarded as distinct countries, and the principles to be kept in mind in forming a correct judgment; and, finally, the charge of Ireland with respect to the State, and the contribution which Ireland should make to it.[163]This inquiry, set on foot by a British statesman who had made himself notorious for ‘assimilating Great Britain and Ireland in finance,’ proceeded, nevertheless, upon an admission that, financially, the two countries were still distinct, and that the resources of each—their ‘taxable capacity,’ in other words, a phrase turned into absurd ridicule—afforded the true and the only test, as to the equity of Irish compared to British taxation. The Commissioners were engaged in their arduous task for months; they explained, with a fulness and clearness never before so complete, the history of the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland. They brought distinctly out the fiscal position of the two countries before the Union; they set forth at length the financial arrangements made in 1800-01; they described the compromise effected in 1816; they dwelt on the fiscal policy of Peel to Ireland, and placed it in significant contrast with that of Mr. Gladstone; and they conclusively proved that, from the Union to the present time, Great Britain and Ireland had been treated financially as separate countries, despite the ‘assimilation’ of 1853-60, and that the right of Ireland, under the Treaty of Union, to the ‘exemptions and abatements’ secured to her, these being interpreted as the case requires, still give her immunities from taxation especially her own, which must be recognised if she is to obtain justice. Turning, then, to the resources of Great Britain and Ireland, regarded as apart, as being the true criterion of the taxation which Ireland ought to bear, the Commissioners reviewed a great mass of evidence, which, as far as was perhaps possible, made the truth manifest, and arrived at conclusions which appear to be decisive. Comparing the death duties of Ireland and of Great Britain, the proportion is about 1 to 18; comparing the income tax, it is about 1 to 22; taking a great variety of other tests, receipts of railways, savings banks deposits, money and postal orders, and letters and telegrams, it varies from 1 to 24 and 16; and an estimate of the income of the two countries, an estimate certainly not fair to Ireland, gives a proportion of about 1 to 18. There are many reasons that these figures exaggerate the true resources of Ireland, but, assuming them to be approximately correct, the Commission has reported that Great Britain exceeds Ireland in resources by 20 to 1; in other words, that the ‘taxable capacity of Ireland, as contrasted with that of Great Britain, cannot now be more than as 1 to 20.’[164] Applying this inference to the taxation of the two countries, the conclusions formed by this tribunal can hardly admit of question. The revenue and taxation of Ireland compared with that of Great Britain from 1889 to 1894 has been £7,300,000 and £7,800,000 against from £85,000,000 to £89,000,000, that is, Ireland contributed from 8 to 9 per cent. of the sum total. But if the resources of Ireland are only one-twentieth of those of Great Britain, her taxation ought to be one-twentieth only, that is, it ought not to be from £7,300,000 to £7,800,000; it ought to be less than £5,000,000; not 8 or 9 per cent., but less than 5 per cent. It follows from this that Ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two and three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of time.[165]

Enormous against Ireland as is this excess of taxation, it may amount to a very much larger sum, if the national account be taken on another, perhaps a sounder, basis. There is the highest authority to show that taxation ought only to fall, in the instance of any given country, on the surplus remaining over and above the cost of the necessaries of life; and as regards the populations of Great Britain and Ireland, this cost may be assumed to be £12 a head. But if we take the income of Great Britain to be 1400 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life at the above rate would for Great Britain be a sum of 324 millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be 1076 millions. On the other hand, if we turn to Ireland, the poor country, and suppose her income to be 76 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life for Ireland would be a sum of 46 millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be 30 millions only. On this hypothesis, the resources of Ireland which might be fairly taxed—her taxable capacity, in a word—would, compared with the resources of Great Britain, be, not as 1 to 20, but as 1 to 36 only; and her taxation ought to be less than £3,000,000, not, as before mentioned, less than £5,000,000. The Childers Commission, no doubt, with the exception of one of its members, did not give its sanction to this conclusion; but it was that formed by Sir Robert Giffen, a master of the subject on all its bearings, and it cannot, in common fairness, be left out of sight. Sir Robert Giffen’s view is expressed in these words; it will be observed that his figures do not correspond with those just cited; but the only point to consider is the principle on which he takes his stand: ‘If you deduct a minimum sum, so much per head from each of the community, as a sort of minimum sum, though you would not wish to take anything from a man who had no more than that, then the taxable income would be the whole income in each country above that sum. That was the sort of general idea. If you apply that to Ireland, and take a minimum sum of, say, £12 a head, you would get upon the basis of an Irish income of £76,000,000 a taxable surplus, I think, now of about £22,000,000, and in Great Britain your taxable surplus would come to over £900,000,000.’[166]

Setting, however, these last considerations aside, the Childers Commission has conclusively shown that Ireland is very largely overtaxed, and has been so for a long series of years; and the figures that represent this great overcharge by no means represent the real difference of the burdens imposed on the two countries. It does not require the authority of Pitt to tell us that even equal taxation, equally applied, is felt much more acutely by a poor community than by one that is rich and prosperous; let us assume, what is by no means the fact, that this equality exists as between Great Britain and Ireland, still Ireland suffers much more than Great Britain. As Mill remarked a long time ago, ‘It is not the same thing to take £2 from a man who has £40 a year, as to take £4 from a man who has £80, or £40 from a man who has £800; the sacrifice imposed on the taxpayer is greater upon the man from whom you take £2 out of £40 than it is on the man from whom you take £40 out of £800, although the proportion is the same.’ A few examples, taken from the case of Great Britain and Ireland, will make the truth of this proposition perfectly clear. The wages of an agricultural labourer in Great Britain are, say, £40 a year; the wages of an agricultural labourer in Ireland are, say, £26; the first pays £3 taxes on his tea and tobacco; the second pays only £2; but the £2 are obviously much the heavier charge. Or suppose that a British artisan has £100 a year, and an Irish artisan no more than £80; is not the first more lightly taxed than the second, if he contributes £5 to the revenue against £4? And the same thing happens if we ascend the social scale; the £150 income tax paid by a British landlord of £3000 a year is not felt by him to be such a charge as the £50 paid by an Irish landlord of £1000 a year; the same principle would extend to the profits of trade were there small sums in Ireland and large sums in Great Britain. Make taxes, therefore, as equal as possible, and make their incidence completely equal, still, in the case of a poor compared to a wealthy country, the real burden on the taxpayer will be very different; it was for this reason that the late Mr. Nassau Senior, an economist of no ordinary parts, pointedly remarked, as regards British and Irish taxation, ‘England is the most lightly taxed and Ireland the most heavily taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally liable to equal taxation: I do not believe that Ireland is a poor country because she is overtaxed, but I think she is overtaxed because she is poor.’[167]

Ireland, therefore, on a full review of the argument, has been overtaxed at least between two and three millions sterling a year for certainly more than forty years; and this excess, as she is a very poor country, is, in her case especially severe. The trend of taxation, if the phrase may be employed, as we follow its course, during a long period, clearly indicates that she has suffered from grave financial wrong. In 1819-20, we have seen, the taxation of Great Britain was at the rate of £3 13s. a head, that of Ireland being 15s. 5d.; the proportion was £2 13s. 1d. and £1 6s. 7d. in 1859-60; in 1893 it was £2 4s. and £1 8s.; in other words, the imposts of the wealthy country were progressively decreased, while the imposts of the poor country were progressively raised. This distinction, no doubt, has been partly due to the fact that the population of Great Britain has been largely augmented, and the population of Ireland has been enormously reduced in numbers; the charge in Great Britain has been distributed among ever growing millions, the charge in Ireland has been concentrated upon ever lessening thousands; but this will not nearly account for the difference; ‘the wealthier country’ it has been caustically said, ‘was taxed less and less as it became more wealthy; the poorer country was burdened more and more as its poverty increased.’[168] And the overcharge on Ireland is all the more grievous because it owed its origin to the policy of free trade; and this policy has been a questionable boon to Ireland, while to Great Britain it has been an immense benefit. No doubt the cheapening of the price of the necessaries and of some of the conveniences of life, which has been one of the results of free trade, has been a great advantage to the Irish labourer, artisan, and mere cottar peasant; but free trade has been injurious to the real Irish farmer and the Irish landlord, and to most of the classes connected with the land; and the land is the main source of the scanty wealth of Ireland. Free trade, on the other hand, has been a principal cause of the extraordinary development of the material welfare of England which has been witnessed during the last fifty years; it has doubled and trebled her gigantic manufactures and trade, if her agriculture is by no means flourishing. This striking contrast gives pain to right-minded Irishmen; they feel, as Grattan predicted would be the case, that their country’s interests have been sacrificed to British commerce; and the following observations are essentially true and just: ‘The change’ (from protection to free trade) ‘has not been so advantageous to Ireland, a country in which there is but little trade or manufacturing industry, as it has been to England; although, as consumers, the Irish population may have gained in some cases by the abolition of the duties on foodstuffs, yet, on the other hand, as producers, chiefly dependent on agriculture, they have lost in a far greater degree by the cheap prices in the British markets, produced, in part at least, by the free and untaxed supply of foreign corn, live stock, dead meat, butter, cheese, eggs, and other articles of food.... It may even perhaps be said that just as Ireland suffered in the last century from the protective and exclusive commercial policy of Great Britain, so she has been at a disadvantage in this century from the adoption of an almost unqualified free trade policy for the United Kingdom.’[169]

Many attempts, I have said, have been made to answer the conclusive Report of the Childers Commission, to carp at its proceedings, to challenge its statements, to deny that Ireland has been largely overtaxed; but, with scarcely an exception, they have been grotesque failures. I need hardly notice an audacious sally, which has been turned to account in the House of Commons, and has split the ears of the groundlings in different parts of England. England, the argument runs, has been too kind to Ireland; Ireland pays no land tax and sundry other duties; in other respects she is equally taxed with Great Britain; she has not even a semblance of a real complaint; and—exactly in the manner of Swift’s satire—‘let her hold her tongue, or it may be the worse for her.’ Ireland, no doubt, ‘assimilated as she has been in finance,’ is free from some charges imposed on England; she has still ‘exemptions and abatements’ which, to some extent, preserve her rights under the Treaty of Union, and show that she is still financially a distinct country, as has been recognised by every leading British statesman, from the day of Pitt to the day of Mr. Gladstone. But the English land tax, properly speaking, is not a tax at all; it is a rent-charge for centuries payable by the land; at all events, the Irish Crown and quit rents may be set off against it; and, as to the other taxes referred to, the cost of collection in Ireland would exceed the returns; it would be a case of in Thesauro nihil, as in Plantagenet times. Another argument, of which the late Mr. Lowe was the author, is more plausible, and has done better service; but it is not the less shallow and false sophistry, when brought to the test. Taxation, it is said, falls on populations only; it is sheer nonsense to say that it falls on countries; it is not levied from Great Britain and Ireland; it is levied from the inhabitants within their borders. But the Englishman, the Scotsman, and the Irishman are equally taxed; the Irishman, indeed, has a small advantage; equality of taxation is the rule in this matter; and obviously equality is the same thing as equity. An English landlord in Kent, a Scotch landlord in Perthshire, an Irish landlord in Kildare, pay the same income tax on the same rentals; so does a merchant in London, a merchant in Edinburgh, a merchant in Belfast, on the same profits; and the same principle extends to all other classes. A farmer in Surrey, a crofter in Argyleshire, a shopkeeper in Galway, pay exactly the same tax on a gallon of rum, a gallon of whiskey, a hogshead of beer; the charge is the same for each commodity in the three households. This Irish grievance, therefore, is a mere delusion; it is a sickly phantom that vanishes in the light of the day.

That taxation falls on populations and not on areas of land is a truism really never disputed; the use of the word ‘countries,’ in this sense, is a mere popular phrase. This argument keeps out of sight the fact that equal taxes, however equally imposed, are much heavier in the case of a poor than of a rich community; but, waiving this objection, it is a sheer fallacy. If two populations had exactly the same tastes, used the same commodities in the same proportions, and were in the possession of the same resources; equality of taxation, if equally applied, would probably be essentially just. But if two populations have different tastes, if they differ in the use of even the same commodities, and if their resources are very different, and especially if equal taxation be not equally applied, this apparent equality, far from being equity, may become plain, nay, very grave iniquity. This may be made intelligible, at a glance, by the consideration of a few instances easily conceived. Impose an equal tax on coals in England and Ireland: would the charge fall equally on Englishmen in a land of coal and on Irishmen in a land of peat mosses? Tax Londoners and Parisians at the same rate on coffee: would the Londoner, who drinks comparatively little coffee, be as heavily mulcted as the Parisian, who drinks a great deal? Or suppose that light taxes were laid on articles that suit Englishmen, and enter into the consumption of the millions of England, and that heavy taxes were laid on articles that suit Irishmen, and are consumed by the Irish millions: would not this system favour Englishmen, and injure Irishmen, though the taxes on all these articles were the same in both countries? Examples by the hundred might be brought forward; these suffice to prove that equality of taxation, as between communities, differing from each other in the conditions and circumstances of life, and notably if the incidence of this taxation is not the same, may be made to effect the grossest injustice. And this financial wrong has been done, to a very great extent, if we compare the taxation of Great Britain and Ireland. The consumption of tea and tobacco by the head is nearly the same in both countries; the taxes on these commodities are the same; admit that this is equitable in a certain sense, though the impost is relatively more burdensome on the poor community. The consumption of spirits by the head, also, is much the same for the Three Kingdoms; the taxation is precisely the same; this, for the sake of argument, I will call justice. But the consumption of beer by the head in Great Britain is about double what it is in Ireland; probably ten Englishmen drink beer compared to one Irishman; whiskey is the ordinary spirituous drink of Irishmen. Now, the taxes on beer and on whiskey are the same in Great Britain and Ireland; but the tax on beer, measured by the alcoholic standard, is about six times lower than the tax on whiskey;[170] beer, therefore, compared with whiskey is greatly undertaxed; whiskey compared with beer is greatly overtaxed; the ordinary drink of Englishmen is treated differently from the ordinary drink of Irishmen, one being encouraged, the other discouraged; though the taxes on each commodity may be everywhere the same, the equality of taxation manifestly results in wrong. The difference amounts to a very large sum; it is one of the causes that Ireland is overtaxed.[171]

Equality of taxation may, therefore, be not equity; it may, as I have said, be sheer iniquity; and this is emphatically the case with respect to Ireland. This system is productive of gross injustice as regards what may be deemed the popular Irish drink; but arguments to support it have not been wanting; they have been complacently gulped down at several public meetings, it is unnecessary to add within the borders of England. The ‘mere Irish,’ it is said, have shocking bad tastes; let them take beer instead of whiskey and they can have no grievance; besides, whiskey is a nasty and unwholesome thing; it is in mercy to them that it is excessively taxed. Is it possible that people who utter this stuff do not see that sumptuary legislation of extreme harshness, nay, persecution of the worst kind, may be justified on the same class of premises? Suppose that Napoleon, in the plenitude of his power, had declared that the Parisians did not know what was good for them, and had heavily taxed their coffee to make them drink tea, even Austerlitz would not have saved the Empire. Marie Antoinette actually made an attempt to banish from her Court the velvets and silks of Lyons, and to make it adopt the cambrics and muslins of Belgium; she would have been too glad to see the first taxed and the second duty free, for she thought the French taste for heavy and gorgeous apparel bad; she only aroused the indignation of Versailles. Or say that the priests of the Jove of the Capitol had argued in this way: ‘Really these detestable Christians are fools for worshipping a crucified Jew; they have only to bow down to CÆsar to escape the lions; otherwise they have themselves alone to blame.’ Nay, coming nearer home, might not a holy prelate of the Irish Established Church in the eighteenth century have reconciled the penal code to his conscience, by whispering to himself that the deluded Papists had but to give up their vain superstitions, and to conform to the pure well of faith that had its source in the Castle, and that then they would be no longer outlaws; but let them take the consequences if they were blind to their best interests on earth and in heaven. In fact, any act of despotism on the part of the State might be vindicated on these very laudable principles; but on this matter of the taxation of Irish whiskey I shall confine myself to a single remark. Reverse the cases of England and Ireland with respect to the imposts on beer and on whiskey; tax beer very heavily and whiskey very lightly; and what would Englishmen say of an argument that has been thought good enough for Irishmen; how long would a Government exist that would try to carry out such a policy? In truth, this reasoning, if it can be so called, is the worst kind of sophistry: the frank brutality of the Roman proconsul, who told the population of a subject province that they must endure their burdens as they would endure the rain and the tempest, is less censurable, to my mind at least, than this compound of absurd and offensive insolence.

Another argument, really of no greater value, has had many supporters in the House of Commons. True it is, it is admitted, that, compared with Great Britain, Ireland has been hardly treated in finance; but this is because she is a poor country, and a poor country must suffer from taxation, fair as it may be, more than a wealthy country. But the same inequality is seen in England: Dorset and Wiltshire are more heavily burdened than Yorkshire and Lancashire, yet Dorset and Wiltshire make no complaints as Ireland does. This argument, however, ignores history, and sets the Treaty of Union at nought; Dorset and Wiltshire are mere fractions of England; Ireland has always been financially a distinct country, entitled to separate financial rights; and this has been recognised by the ablest British statesmen, notably, of late years, by Mr. Goschen, and by Mr. Gladstone. This reasoning, in a word, assumes that Ireland is merely an aggregate of British counties; but this has never been her true financial position; it is easy to sneer at the phrase ‘separate entity’ by which she has been called, that is, a land, financially, apart from Great Britain, but sneers cannot get the better of facts. These statements of distinguished English experts are unquestionable in view of the record of history. Lord Farrer has remarked: ‘It is abundantly clear that of the two conflicting theories—viz. the one which regards Great Britain and Ireland as one country for the purpose of taxation and expenditure, and the other which regards Great Britain and Ireland as separate partners—the second is the one upon which our instructions are founded; the one which has the greatest support in history, and the one upon which all parties in Parliament have recently acted.’[172] And Mr. Childers completely concurs: ‘If apart from the reference, it is asked why a distinction should be taken between Great Britain and Ireland any more than between Kent and Yorkshire, the answer is that Ireland entered into a partnership with Great Britain under a formal Treaty of Union, which did, to a certain extent, by the recognition of the claim of Ireland to abatements and exemptions, if circumstances should require, maintain the position of Ireland as entitled to separate treatment as a whole, so far as relates to taxation. It must also be recollected that, as a matter of fact, Ireland has, at all times since the Union, in various degrees received such separate treatment. Ireland, therefore, cannot be regarded as merely a group of counties of the United Kingdom.’[173]

Two other arguments may be ascribed to the ingenuity, if this is the true word, of the Treasury; but the first rests on a gross misrepresentation of fact, the other upon a false theory; both, with a slight reservation, may be dismissed as hopeless. Ireland, it is said, may possibly be overtaxed—admit this for the sake of argument—but she has had more than her fair share of loans from the State; a considerable part of these has been freely remitted; this has not been the case in England and Scotland; a large counterclaim, therefore, may be made against her. ‘Out of a total sum of about one hundred and nineteen millions and a half advanced in the United Kingdom, a little over fifty-two millions, or 43.7 per cent., has been advanced to Ireland, and of this, so large a proportion as one-fifth, or over ten millions, had to be remitted, or treated as a free grant, whilst only one fifty-eighth part of the advances made to Great Britain were so treated.’[174] So far as these loans have been advances for the real good of Ireland, for example, for the promotion of reproductive works-these may fairly be taken into account; but millions have been misapplied and wasted or spent in the unproductive relief of distress;[175] these sums probably are greater than the excess made out by the Treasury. As regards the remission of the £10,000,000, the assertion relied on is simply deceptive. Not less than £4,000,000 of this sum represent the fund the extinction of which was the consideration of putting the income tax on Ireland by Mr. Gladstone; and, as the charge of that tax has been since more than £23,000,000, it savours of impudence to call this a remission; it was writing off a doubtful debt to justify a new and portentous burden. The residue of the £10,000,000 is composed of advances that have been misspent or spent on purposes really not Irish; these were not remitted in the proper acceptation of the word. ‘The remaining portion of the ten millions of alleged remissions of loans consists mainly of remissions of the repayment of expenditure by the Board of Works, where it was shown that such expenditure had been wasteful, and of advances to the clergy and laity of the Established Church of Ireland, which advances Parliament, by legislation, deprived them of the ability of repaying. Altogether it would appear, from Sir Edward Hamilton’s evidence, that in reality only about one million out of the ten corresponded in their character to the advances made to Great Britain, and that consequently the proportion of real remissions of loans to Ireland did not differ very materially from that of the proportion of the remission in Great Britain.’

The second argument appears to be more plausible; but it is mischievous, in a high degree, and dangerous; except to a slight extent, it is completely fallacious. Ireland, it is allowed, contributes from £7,300,000 to £7,800,000 to the exchequer; but of this sum £5,000,000 and upwards are expended on her; she really hardly pays £2,000,000 to the State; the £5,000,000 therefore, or nearly all this sum, create a just counterclaim against her, even admitting she is excessively taxed. This expenditure on Ireland, it is contended, is for Irish ‘local’ purposes; it is not expenditure for ‘Imperial’ purposes; the account, as between Great Britain and Ireland, is to be taken as if all this expenditure, or nearly so, were purely local. But is not the expenditure for keeping up the Lord-Lieutenant and his Court, is not the expenditure on the government and administration of Ireland, essentially, and in the main, Imperial, and not local in a legitimate sense, so long as the United Kingdom exists? Is it not as Imperial, at least for the most part, as the expenditure on the British army and navy and on the government and administration of England and Scotland is Imperial, and not, properly speaking, local? This argument could be retorted with decisive effect, if urged in the interest of Ireland against Great Britain. If this kind of expenditure in Ireland is held to be local, not Imperial, the same rule must apply to England and Scotland; this expenditure in their case must be local and not Imperial. Why, then, should Ireland contribute to such charges as public works in Edinburgh and London, as the maintenance of the great English dockyards and harbours, as the cost of the army and navy outside Ireland, and of the government and administration of England and Scotland? Clearly on the Treasury hypothesis she should not contribute; and if she does, she has an immense counterclaim, so far as her contributions are applied to these local objects. But, in truth, this whole argument, when examined, is a mere sophism. The revenues of the Three Kingdoms are paid into a common exchequer; they are distributed according to the uses of the State; this expenditure, as a general rule, must be held to be Imperial, not local, and cannot give a part of the Three Kingdoms a right to make a claim against another. The State spends millions on London which it does not spend on Surrey; it spends millions in Hants which it does not spend in Berkshire: does this circumstance give Surrey or Berkshire a title to say we can make a demand on London and Hants? Precisely in the same way, the expenditure of the State on Ireland, as contra-distinguished from that on Great Britain, cannot, at least as a general principle, give Great Britain a right to make a counterclaim on Ireland.

It is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a tendency to create local and even national ill-will; to set parts of one country against other parts, and two countries against each other; it distinctly alienates Ireland from Great Britain; as I have said, it is full of mischief and peril. In truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the overcharge of Irish taxation; it has never entered the minds of statesmen. Nothing can be more certain than that every great British financier, from the day of Pitt to the day of Peel, and to the day of Mr. Gladstone, has regarded the expenditure of the Three Kingdoms, as this is paid into a common exchequer, as a general fund to be allocated as the State requires; and has not regarded it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in separate districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim against another. I quote from a report of one of the members of the Childers Commissions: ‘A division of the expenditure of the United Kingdom into “charge for Irish purposes” and “Imperial expenditure,” cannot be made under the system of finance embodied in the constitution established by the Legislative Union. All expenditure under that system is “expenditure of the United Kingdom,” or, to express it more briefly, “Imperial expenditure;” and all Imperial expenditure is defrayed from the common fund of the Imperial Exchequer. If a part of the Imperial expenditure be described as a charge “for Irish purposes,” this classification does not affect the fact that it is Imperial expenditure, and charged as such upon the whole Imperial revenue. To regard this expenditure as non-Imperial, to deduct it from the particular revenue contributed by Ireland to Imperial expenditure, to treat the fraction of Irish revenue left as if it were the whole of the Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, and to regard Imperial expenditure itself as not including “the charge for Irish purposes,” would be to do what the Constitution does not sanction: it would be to deal with the revenue and expenditure of the United Kingdom as if the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were raised and administered by separate authorities, each of which, having first, out of its own revenue, defrayed its separate charges, then applied the balance to payment of common expenses, which, in that case, would be properly classified as Imperial.’[176] And the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen is to the same effect: ‘The opinion which I have formed is that, on the whole, it is not possible to make the distinction between the different objects of Imperial expenditure which is made in some of these discussions; that, in fact, all the expenditure by an Imperial Government is to be considered expenditure for Imperial purposes, and although part of it may be spent locally, you cannot in any way call it expenditure for the special benefit of that locality. It is expenditure for the general objects of the Imperial Government.’[177]

The theory of the Treasury is thus essentially false; but accidentally, it contains, I think, a residuum of truth. When, as between two countries, one pays a considerable sum, exclusively or mainly from local rates, and the same charge in the other country is for the most part defrayed from Imperial taxation by the State, it appears to me that a portion of the sum so paid by the State may give one country a counterclaim against the other to some extent. This is the case as between Great Britain and Ireland; the cost of national education and of the police force is largely discharged in Great Britain by local rates; in Ireland it amounts to about £2,700,000, and is mainly defrayed from Imperial taxes; this may create a counterclaim against Ireland within reasonable limits at least. No doubt the charge of bringing up the young of the poorer classes and of maintaining public order by a suitable force, ought largely to be an Imperial charge; but when in one community it is chiefly borne by local funds, and in another it is chiefly borne by the common Exchequer of both, this seems to give the first community a partial claim against the second. This counterclaim, such as it is, has been reckoned, in addition to a sum for free grants, at about £500,000 a year by the Childers Commission; but it did not thoroughly go into the subject; this estimate is believed to be too low by well-informed persons; the counterclaim has been calculated to be about £1,000,000 sterling. Lord Salisbury’s Government, we have seen, promised to appoint a second Commission to examine this question at length, besides some other financial questions suggested by the Report of the Childers Commission; for some unknown reason it has not redeemed its pledge; it is very desirable that it should redeem it. Apart from the mischief of a delay approaching a breach of public faith, the only inference that can be drawn, if this promise is broken, is that the Government accepts the view in this matter of the Childers Commission.

The Childers Commission has conclusively proved that Ireland is much too highly taxed; whatever counterclaim may be made against this excess, the overcharge can be little less than two millions a year. The arguments urged against this conclusion are mere leather and prunella that may be brushed aside; the Report of the Commission has had the sanction of nearly all economists of a high order. By all means let another Commission strike a balance after making every fair allowance; but if it shall be struck, as it must be in Ireland’s favour, the only real question for impartial men will be how it shall be best discharged. Ireland has practically acquiesced for years in fiscal injustice; in any view of the case she has no right to call for a change in our whole system of finance for her special benefit. Still less has she a right to demand that her customs and excise duties should be placed at a lower level than those of Great Britain; this would raise a mischievous barrier between the two countries; this policy would be, perhaps, impossible; if possible, it would probably injure Ireland greatly in the long run. The only remaining alternative is to leave our existing fiscal system intact, but to make an annual grant from the exchequer for Irish uses, as compensation for excessive taxation; this has the support of the Childers Commission. ‘The third method, and that which most strongly recommends itself to our judgment, is to give compensation to Ireland by making an annual allocation of revenue in their favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social welfare of the country.’[178] It is difficult to suppose, should a large yearly sum be found to be due to Ireland, as affairs now stand, that Parliament will refuse to pay honourably a just debt; it would be a shameful act to repudiate an obligation of the kind. Years ago Pitt declared in his characteristic style that ‘Ireland might safely rely on Great Britain for the discharge of any fair claim on her; the liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of Great Britain have never been found deficient.’ The time has come to test the value of this pledge; it has been announced by the highest authority, in which English opinion largely prevails, that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years: will the ‘people of Great Britain’ give effect to this judgment, and make good a claim which hardly admits of a doubt? The demand of Ireland, no doubt, is not sustained by violent agitation and the shouts of multitudes; but it is backed by all that is best in Irish opinion; it rests upon the simplest financial justice. It is dangerous to treat a demand such as this with contempt, and still more so with weak sophistry; not that Ireland can make an effective resistance to fiscal wrong, however clearly proved; and I for one deprecate rhodomontade about ‘the Boston tea-ships.’ But a claim may have great moral force, though it be not supported by physical power; the disregard of this claim would provoke well-informed Irishmen, and weaken the Union perhaps greatly; and, after all, is it a seemly sight, is it becoming in the eyes of the world, that the richest country in Europe should practically impose an iniquitous burden upon the poorest?