NET BALANCES PAID BY IRELAND TO GREAT BRITAIN.
| Single Year. | Irish "True" Revenue. | Expenditure in Ireland. | Balance One Year. | Decadal Balance. |
| £ | £ | £ | £ | |
| 1819-20 | 5,256,564 | 1,564,880 | 3,691,684 | 36,916,840 |
| 1829-30 | 5,502,125 | 1,345,549 | 4,156,576 | 41,565,760 |
| 1839-40 | 5,415,889 | 1,789,567 | 3,626,322 | 36,263,220 |
| 1849-50 | 4,861,465 | 2,247,687 | 2,613,778 | 26,137,780 |
| 1859-60 | 7,700,334 | 2,304,334 | 5,396,000 | 53,960,000 |
| 1869-70 | 7,426,332 | 2,938,122 | 4,488,210 | 44,882,100 |
| 1879-80 | 7,280,856 | 4,054,549 | 3,226,307 | 32,263,070 |
| 1889-90 | 7,734,678 | 5,057,708 | 2,676,970 | 26,769,700 |
| 1899-1900 | 8,664,500 | 6,980,000 | 1,684,500 | 16,845,000 |
| Averaged Balances for 90 years | 315,603,470 | |||
| Add, Actual Balances, 1900-09 | 16,214,000 | |||
| Net Payments, in 99 years | 331,817,470 | |||
| Deduct Drawings, deficit of 1909-10 | 2,357,500 | |||
| Net Payments, in 100 years | 329,459,970 | |||
| Add, Actual Balance, 1910-11 | 321,000 | |||
| Net Balances paid by Ireland to Great Britain, 1809-1911 | 329,780,970 | |||
What has become of Sir David Barbour's argument in favour of the existing fiscal system? He admitted that Ireland was overtaxed by two millions and three-quarters. But he showed, it will be remembered, that if not only the revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to Imperial services had all been in proportion to Ireland's real taxable capacity of one-twentieth, she would have been a loser by a million.[117] Ireland, therefore, he argued, had certainly no grievance, while Great Britain received the substantial, though not strictly sufficient, sum of two millions as Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenses.
Let us apply the same reasoning to the present situation. Ireland, by hypothesis, is "overtaxed" by three millions,[118] but if not only the revenue, but the expenditure and contribution to Imperial services of Ireland were all in proportion to her real taxable capacity, which we may estimate now at one-twenty-fifth, we find that she would be a loser by five millions. Her "true" revenue from all sources ought on this supposition to be £6,605,900; it is £10,032,000. Her local expenditure ought to be £2,875,540; it is £11,344,500. Her contribution to Imperial services ought to be £3,730,360; it is a minus quantity of £1,312,500. Sir David Barbour's reasoning, then, leads us to this astounding paradox, that Ireland, while overtaxed by three millions, gains five millions by the arrangement. Moreover, whether we accept Sir David Barbour's reasoning or not, it is a fact that to-day Ireland, which contributed to Imperial services five and a half millions in 1860, and two millions in 1894, now, so far from contributing anything, costs a million and a quarter more than she brings in. This, certainly, was not a result he either anticipated or would have approved of. On the contrary, he anticipated a reduction in Irish civil expenditure, to be saved for Irish purposes, without prejudice to the Imperial contribution. It makes the brain dizzy to compare his anticipation with the reality.
How, on the other hand, stands the argument of Lord Farrer and Mr. Currie? They prophesied a great increase in Irish expenditure and the disappearance of the contribution to Imperial services. That has come true. Lord Welby (and indeed the majority of the Commission) was with them in declining to regard excessive local expenditure as a set-off to excessive and unsuitable taxation, and in condemning root and branch the system of grants, aids, and doles as wasteful in itself and as sapping the self-reliance of Irishmen. There again they were right. They were at one with all their colleagues in holding that under the Union it was impossible to differentiate between the taxation of Ireland and Great Britain, and they prescribed, as the only sound remedy, Home Rule. Once more they were right.
The figures of to-day constitute the reductio ad absurdum of the Union. For over a century in Ireland we have defied the laws of political economy, but they have conquered us at last. Sound finance demands that revenue and expenditure should be co-related. Ireland's economic circumstances are widely different from those of Great Britain, but she has been included, without any regard to her needs and without any reference to Irish expenditure, in a system of taxation designed exclusively for the capacities and needs of Great Britain. Hence Irish revenue is both excessive and inadequate.
"Excessive"? "Inadequate"? What do these terms really mean? Let us once and for all clear our minds of all obscurity and look the facts in the face. No one knows what Irish revenue and expenditure ought to be, or would be, if Irishmen had controlled their own destinies. It is useless to parade immense sums as the cash equivalent of over-taxation; it is idle to array against them rival figures of over-expenditure. Normal Irish revenue and normal Irish expenditure are matters of speculation. For all we know, Ireland, had she been permitted normal political development, would be raising a larger revenue, and feeling it less; while it is absolutely certain that she would be paying her own way and contributing to Imperial services more, in proportion to her resources, than she did before the Union. The political and therefore the economic development of Ireland have been deliberately and forcibly arrested. I do not say malignantly, because there was no malignant intention. But the action, if mistaken, was deliberately and consistently sustained. Much of Irish industrial talent was lost irrevocably before the old industrial restrictions were removed. There remained the land, an immense source of potential wealth, if properly developed under a rational system of agrarian tenure. For the best part of a century after the Union, the agrarian tenure, dating from the first genuine colonization of Ireland, when the land was confiscated wholesale and the peasantry enslaved, was maintained by force of arms. Thirty years ago (if we date from the Land Act of 1881) we began to change this tenure into another equally defective, though far more favourable to the tenant. A little later, but only eight years ago, on a thorough and systematic scale, we began the parallel policy of Land Purchase. Even now, having transferred half the land to peasant ownership, and placed the other half under judicial rents, many of our statesmen are unwilling to give Ireland the control of its own affairs. On the contrary, step by step with the economic enfranchisement of the farmers, has gone the policy of destroying their personal and political independence, and forcing them to look outside their own country for financial aid, by spending money upon Ireland which Irishmen have no direct responsibility for raising. What a travesty of statesmanship! First, having assisted the farmer to buy his own land, to clap him on the back with "Now, my fine fellow, you are a free man." In the same breath to tell him that he is not fit to have a direct voice in the management of his own country's affairs, and to try and reconcile him to this insult by sapping that very independence of character which the acquirement of a freehold has begun to instil in him.
I described in Chapter IX. how a number of patriotic Irishmen, working both at industrial and agricultural development, have striven to counteract this fatal tendency, and to persuade their countrymen to rely on themselves alone. But I venture to repeat what I said then, that without the bracing discipline of Home Rule, and, above all, of the financial Home Rule, these efforts are doomed to comparative failure.
It is absolutely necessary to produce an equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in Ireland, as in every other country in the world. Whatever the temporary strain upon Ireland, whatever the sacrifices involved, the thing must be done, and done now or never. Great Britain's interest is something, but it is trivial beside that of Ireland. The situation is growing worse, not better, and Irishmen should unite to insist that the whole system should stop.