[28]must ever correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity."
The attitude of Ireland in this matter is perfectly plain. While deprecating in the strongest terms the means by which the Union was carried, she is prepared, so 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 sides, and these liabilities can only be removed—as in the case of the Disestablished Irish Church—by the consent of both the contracting parties to the treaty.
The spectacle of the richest country in Europe haggling over shekels with the poorest is a sight to give pause, while Great Britain's insistence upon her pound of flesh is the more unpardonable because Ireland declares that it is not in the bond. That the highest estimate of the taxable capacity of Ireland arrived at by the Commissioners was one-twentieth, while the actual revenue contribution of Ireland was one-eleventh of 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 in glaring contrast with the concurrent increase in Great Britain from twenty millions in 1850 to more than thirty-eight millions at the present day. Whatever may be the other causes which have led to the stream of emigration from Ireland it may certainly be claimed that not least among them is the ever-increasing incidence of taxation which is year by year laying a greater burden upon the privilege of living in that country.
A recent Report, issued by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, gives statistics with reference
[29]to the earnings of agricultural labourers throughout the three kingdoms. It concludes that on an average a labourer in England obtains 18s. 3d. a week, in Wales 17s. 3d., in Scotland 19s. 3d., and in Ireland 10s. 11d. It may be noted that in no English county is the average lower than 14s. 6d., while in Ireland in seven counties it is less than 10s., Mayo being the lowest with an average wage of 8s. 9d. The present writer has had occasion in the course of the last few months to hear old men on political platforms in a typical English 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 diminished by no less than 200,000. On the assumption arrived at by the Commissioners, that the proper share which Ireland should pay was one-twentieth of the contribution of Great Britain, the country was overtaxed ten years ago to the extent of two and three-quarter millions; yet in spite of that fact in the course of those ten years two millions of additional taxation has been imposed. Two years ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in answer to an inquiry, announced to the House of Commons that in the year 1903-4, the latest for which figures were available, the proportions of tax revenue derived from direct and indirect taxes were:—
Great Britain Ireland
Direct Taxes 50.6 per cent. 27.8 per cent.
Indirect Taxes 49.4 per cent. 72.2 per cent.
[30]These figures show very clearly to what an extent in Ireland taxation falls, not on the luxuries of the rich, but on the commodities which are to a great extent the necessaries of the poor. The manner in which this state of things is maintained was expressed by Sir Robert Giffen in his evidence before the Royal Commission:—
"It is only evident that in matters of taxation Ireland is virtually discriminated against by the character of the direct taxes which happen to be on articles of Irish consumption."
The heavy duties on tea, tobacco, and alcohol—articles which form a larger part of the family budget of the Irish peasant than of the English labourer—are the causes of this burden. The reasons for the larger consumption of what may be roughly called stimulants by the Irishman is undoubtedly to be found in climatic conditions, and also in the smaller amount of nourishing food which he is able to afford. With regard to alcohol, the form in which it is most used 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 accorded to the Englishman's principal drink reduced—according to the Royal Commissioners—the taxation to which, in proportion to its alcohol it should be subjected, from 1s. to 2d. per gallon. Even in respect of tea and tobacco, the inequitable treatment of Ireland is obvious to any one who considers that what is spoken of as equality of taxation is, in reality, identical taxation on articles consumed in vastly different proportions in Great Britain and Ireland.
The argument by which the charge that Ireland is