Ireland and the Home Rule Movement

established and set up by England. The verdict has been delivered; it is against England and in favour of Ireland's contention. Un

L, Ireland a

, if not absolutely, retrograde-is one of the most dismal factors in English politics. Those who would explain it by natural, racial, or religious considerations are probing too deep for an explanation which is in reality much closer at hand. If the ex

er exceeded one and a half millions of pounds, and the National Debt was not more than one million. In the [21]succeeding years the French war and the rebellion of '98 swelled the expenditure, as did the maintenance of an armed force in the country, wh

the taxation of the country had risen to three millions, and t

n that of a year of normal expenditure, such as was 1795, that Pitt and Castlereagh framed the financial c

nteenths of the joint expenditure of the United Kingdom, together with the annual charge upon her pre-union debt. One should add, however, that the Irish House of Lords p

of the Exchequer, drawing up an Irish budget and regulating an Irish debt, remained after the

e progress they have made in the last twenty, they may at the expiration of it be fully able [22]to cope with the Br

l proposals of the Act, has been summarised as follows in the report

regarded as separate and distinct entities. Ireland was to contribute to the common expenditure in proportion to her resources, so far as the same could

ns, and it went on increasing at this rate until in 1815 it amounted to no less than six and a half millions, having more than doubled in

rease of debt would have [23]made Ireland less fitted to bear equal taxation with Great Britain, but the statesmen of the day thought otherwise, and in 1817 the Exchequers were amalgamated. Even then the fiscal systems of the two countries were not in all respects assimilated, though in regard to some taxes an equalisation was effected, as, for example, in the case of tobacco, the duty on the unmanufactured variety of which was raised from 1s. to 3s. per lb., while that on cigars and manufactured tobacco was raised from 1s. to 16s. per lb. The manner in which the change affected social conditions in Ireland at this time may best be illustrated by the fact that the taxes on commodities, which necess

dealt her an almost equally disastrous blow. The absence of an industrial side which she might develop, as did England, the almost complete dependence on agriculture, joined to the enfeebled condition in which the lean years had left her, made the adoption at this mome

which in two years was multiplied fourfold, while in 1858 Disraeli assimilated for the first time the whiskey duty in the two islands by raising it in Ireland to 8s. a gallon. The result of this new departure in taxation may

Passenger Duty, and the tax on horses, carriages, patent medicines, and armorial bearings. It will be said, no doubt, that Ireland ought to show due gratitude for these exemptions, but though they raise collectively a sum of ￡4,0

ve ensued, a sum of between twenty millions and thirty millions has been collected in Ireland as income tax. Objection cannot-beyond a certain point-be taken to the incidence of this tax, [25]seeing that it does not fall upon the poo

e most heavily taxed and England the most lightly taxed country in Europe." Twenty-five years later Mr. Goschen, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, consented to the appointment of another Committee on the same subject, but no report was ever issued. In 1895 a Royal Commission was appointed, comprising representatives of all political par

ns upon which we are practically unanimous, and we think it expedient to set th

ust, for the purposes of this inquiry

upon Ireland a burden which, as eve

Ireland [26]between 1853 and 1860 was not j

f taxation does not necessari

f that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very

tment of English rule in Ireland. One cannot hel

ns?' If I were asked what security was necessary, without hesitation I should answer 'None.' The

an Irishman who discussed with him the po

us, sir; we should unite

ster into line with the Nationalists. Such a vision of the Protestant lion lying down with the Catholic lamb had not been seen since the Volunteers had mus

e was a resolution in the House of Commons, proposed by Mr. John Redmond, and seconded by Mr. Lecky. The rejoinder of the [27]Government to the demands made was to the ef

ot merely of the Royal Commission, but of the Select Committees of 1865 and 1890, presupposed a dispari

ifferent in the two countries; and we have seen how, in respect of such widely separate thi

l stigmatised by one of the most distinguished amo

and Dr. Jekyll-an integral part when it was a question of taxation, and, therefore, entitled to no e

and, the answer is that Wiltshire or Somersetshire-shall we say-have always received equal treatment with the rest of the country, and have never e

the measure of her comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contri

long as it remains in force, to abide by its terms. It partakes of the nature of what lawyers call a bilateral contract, imposing duties and obligations on both

the total for the United Kingdom, throws much light upon the social conditions of the smaller island. The rate of taxation per head per annum went up in the second half of the nineteenth century more than 250 per cent.-rising from about ￡1 in 1850 to more than ￡2 10s. in 1900. This occurred simultaneously with a diminution of population in the same period from seven millions to four and a half millions, a change which is i

glish agricultural constituency pointing a moral from their own or their fathers' recollections of the days before the Corn Laws when wages ran from 8s. to 9s. a week. What is recalled with horror in England as the state of affairs in the "hungry forties" is the present condition in several of the Irish counties. It would be idle to multiply proofs to show the desperate condition of the country. Even in the ten years which have elapsed since the issue of the Report of the Royal Commission the taxation of the country has increased by more than two and a half million pounds, while the population, it is estimated, has in the same period

ritain

0.6 per cent.

49.4 per cent

ich, but on the commodities which are to a great extent the necessaries of the poor. The manner in which this

irtually discriminated against by the character of the direc

ed in England-namely, beer-is subjected to a special exemption at the expense of the whiskey-drinking people of Ireland and Scotland. Cider is not taxed. The tax on whiskey is between two-thirds and three-fourths its price, while that on beer is one-sixth of its price; so that sixty gallons of beer bear the same weight of taxation as does one gallon of whiskey. The usual standard of taxation of liquor is its alcoholic strength, but the special treatment acco

in the administration of that country. When the complaint is heard that she is contributing at this day no less a sum than,￡9,750,000 to revenue, the answer is made that

by telling him that it is on every appurtenance of a spendthrift to which he objects that it is being spent is scarcely to provide a satisfactory justification. The two case

he country. Official returns show that Scotland, with a population slightly larger than that of Ireland, possesses 942 Government officials as against 2,691 in Ireland. In Scotland the salaries of these public servants amount to less than ￡300,000, while in Ireland the corresponding cost is more than ￡1,000

r prisoners a day in Irish prisons than in Scotland. In spite of this the cost of the Irish Board for the last year of which I have seen the figures was ￡144,597, and that of the Scottish Board was only ￡105,588. The ratio between these figures is as 1.3 to 1, which is in n

half the size of the United States army, when at the present time white gloves-the symbol of a crimeless charge-are being given to the judges on every circuit, is a state of affairs which is intolerable, while the small proportion whi

re, liberating money which may be made to serve a useful purpose, is obviously the first [33]step, but any scheme of allocation of large sums for Irish development, without full and proper financial control, will undoubtedly fail to meet the case. The multiplication of irresponsible boards must be stopped, and to what extent anything, save economies in expenditure, can be effected without far larger changes remains a moot point. Of one thing, at any rate, one may be ce

ccounted for the swampy condition of the Phoenix Park by saying-"The English Government

truly as when Pitt spoke. Moreover, it is one of the instances in which the claims of justice and of expediency coincide. The findings of the Financial Relations' Commission fully justified the attitude of the Irish Party to the proposal, under Mr. Gladstone's Bill, that the Irish contribution to the Imperial Treasury should be one-fourteenth of that of Great Britain, while Mr. Parnell declare

th Great Britain, in view of which the fact that the cost of government per head of population is double in Ireland what it is in England, shows the extent to which the one is liable in damages to the other. The increased expenditure on the navy obviously does not benefit equally the two countries, of which the one only h

entity in the appointment of a Select Committee on taxation in [35]1864, and again by Lord Goschen in 1890, and the whole history of her separate legislation bears the same construction. One cannot give a better commentary on what has been seen of the economic condition of the island than by quoting the peroration of the speech of John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, the "great father of the Union," speaking in the Irish House of Parliament:-"It is with a cordial sincerity and a full conviction that it will giv

3