Irish services are vitiated by the
existing system by which any economies in Irish administration go, not
to Ireland, but to the Imperial Treasury, and in this way economical
government is not merely not encouraged but actually discouraged, and
hence it is that one has such contrasts as that to be seen in each
year's Civil Service Estimates, where, under the item of stationery and
postage in respect of public departments, the amount for the last year
which I have seen is, for Scotland L24,000, and for Ireland,L43,000, and
that the Department of Agriculture, out of a total income from
Parliamentary Grant of L190,000, spends no less than L80,000 on salaries
and wages, and another L10,000 on travelling expenses.

Sir Robert Giffen has calculated that the incomes of the wage-earning
classes in Ireland are, man for man, one-half those of the members of
the same classes in England. Statistics of every kind bear out the
striking difference in the conditions of the two countries. The average
poor law valuation in Ireland is about equal to that of the poorest East
London Unions, where it is L3. Though the population is between
one-seventh and one-eighth of that of England, the number of railway
passengers is one-thirty-seventh, the tons of railway freight is
one-seventeenth, the telegrams are one-eighteenth, the postal and money
orders are one-nineteenth of those of England.

Ireland, to take another test of prosperity, is the fourth
meat-producing country in the world and the sixteenth meat-eating, while
England, by a curious coincidence, is the sixteenth meat-producing, but
the fourth meat-eating, country in the world. The one direction in which
the extension of the powers and duties of the Executive has often been
urged has not been pursued. I mean the matter of railways. Though in
1834 a Royal Commission recommended that Irish railways should be built
with money from the British Treasury, and should be subject to State
control, nothing was done in the matter. Lord Salisbury and Lord
Randolph Churchill were in 1886 in favour of the nationalisation of
Irish railways, but at that date again no steps were taken. Mr. Balfour,
it is true, when Chief Secretary, secured the passing of the Light
Railways Act, under which powers were obtained to open up the Congested
Districts by means of light railways, such as those which have been
built to Clifden, in County Galway, and to Burtonport, in County
Donegal. But the policy which was fo