But we have to remember that since 1893 a great and authoritative Financial Commission has reported that England stands in debt to Ireland.
The British public has never quite realised what the Report of 1896 signified, or quite understood the effect which it produced on the Irish nation. The Financial Relations Commission was a body created by the Liberal Government in 1894, soon after the defeat of the Home Rule Bill, and partly as a consequence of that defeat. It consisted of fifteen of the ablest financiers in the United Kingdom, including two great Treasury Chiefs, Lord Farrer and Lord Welby, Sir Robert Hamilton, Sir David Barbour, and that great Parliamentary financial expert Mr. W.A. Hunter. The chair was occupied by an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Childers.[75] The Commission sat for two years, and carried out a most searching investigation. They reported in 1896. Their united Report consists of only two pages in the Blue Book,[76] and the essence of it is contained in five short paragraphs, as follows:—
(1) That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, be considered as separate entities.
(2) That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear.
(3) That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances.
(4) That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden.
(5) That whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth.
Now, what does this amount to? As worked out in the various minority reports, it means that, in the opinion of this Commission, Ireland has been over-taxed for many years at the rate of over £2,000,000 a year. As to the precise sum the Commissioners differ. Some went as high as £3,500,000, others down to £2,000,000, but all, except Sir Thomas Sutherland and Sir David Barbour, set it at about £2,000,000. Mr. Childers, unhappily, died before the close of the Commission. But he wrote an epoch-making Report, in which he estimated the excess of taxation at £2,250,000.[77]
Now, it is useless to make light of this Report. It was the solemn judgment of the highest financiers of the day on the financial workings of the Act of Union. If we turn back to the debates in Parliament in 1800, especially to the speeches of Pitt, prophesying that the Act of Union would take the wealth of England across St. George's Channel, and apply it to Ireland, we cannot escape some sombre reflections on the short-sightedness of great statesmen. Pitt's judgment was disturbed by the existence of a war with France, which created in him an intense desire to unite the two countries. Otherwise he would probably have foreseen that for a rich partner to unite his finances with a poor partner certainly meant bankruptcy for the one, and probably, in the end, also ruin for the other. Taking the nineteenth century as a whole, the fundamental financial error has been this—that Ireland has been taxed on the theory of equality with England in point of wealth. That equality has not existed. What was a light burden for the one country has proved for the other a burden too heavy to be borne.
The result has been that Ireland, being continually overtaxed, has sunk steadily in her resources, and has gradually become less and less of a taxable country. The taxes have returned less and less, and have had to be returned in the form of relief of poverty. A crisis in that situation is now reached, and it is quite clear that we stand at the parting of two roads. Now that the balance is beginning to work against England, it is certain that the only alternative to the restoration of Ireland is the gradual dragging down of England.