e Select Committees of 1865 and 1890, presupposed a disparity
between the conditions in the two countries which not only existed in
fact but were recognised by law.

In regard to the Church, the kind, the police, education, and even
marriage, the laws are different in the two countries; and we have seen
how, in respect of such widely separate things as land, railway
passengers, and armorial bearings, the systems of taxation are distinct.

The position of the official Conservatives was well stigmatised by one
of the most distinguished among their own body--Mr. Lecky--when he
declared that--

"Some people seem to consider Ireland as a kind of intermittent
personality--something like Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll--an integral part
when it was a question of taxation, and, therefore, entitled to no
exemptions, a separate entity when it was a question of rating, and,
therefore, entitled to no relief."

To the argument that Ireland has no greater claim to relief, on the
score of her poverty, than have the more backward agricultural counties
of England, the answer is that Wiltshire or Somersetshire--shall we
say--have always received equal treatment with the rest of the country,
and have never entered into a mutual partnership as did Ireland when she
trusted to the pledges made to her by England, and expressed in these
terms by Castlereagh:--

"Ireland has the utmost possible security that she cannot be taxed
beyond the measure of her comparative ability, and that the ratio of her
contribution 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 o