ilway 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 L4,000,000 by their
incidence in England, Scotland, and Wales, it is calculated that if
applied to Ireland they would bring in not more than L150,000 a year, a
sum so small that one may ask whether it would bear the cost of
collecting.

By way of set-off to the imposition of income tax, which it should be
noted was at the time said to be "temporary," Mr. Gladstone wiped out a
capital debt of four millions, but it must be pointed out that, in the
fifty years which have 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,
seeing that it does not fall upon the poorest classes, and that no
country benefits more than does Ireland from the substitution of direct
for indirect taxation. But what does call for censure is that its
application was not made an occasion for the remission of other taxes.

In 1864 the Conservative Government recognised the serious problem of
the unequal incidence of taxation in the two islands, and appointed a
committee to consider their financial relations. Sir Stafford Northcote,
the chairman of this committee, declared that, notwithstanding the fact
that they were both subject to the same taxation, "Ireland was the 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 parties, and
presided over by a man of commanding ability in the person of Mr.
Childers, a former Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer. The terms of
reference were "to inquire into the financial relations between Great
Britain and Ireland and their relative taxable capacity." The following
extract will serve to show the conclusions of the Commissioners:--

"In carrying out the inquiry we have ascertained that there are certain
questions upon which we are practically unanimous, and we think it
expedient to set them out in this report. Our joint conclusions on these
questions are as follows:-