le in 1860 both
duties were raised to 10s. In the seven years 1853-1860 the taxation of
Ireland was raised by no less than two and a half millions per annum. It
will be recalled that the great famine had taken place in 1846-47, and
that between the Census of 1841 and that of 1861 the population sank
from eight to six millions, while the British population rose from
eighteen and a half to twenty-three millions. The statistical result of
the increased taxes, therefore, was to show a rise in taxation per head
of the Irish people from 13s. 11d. in 1849 to L1 5s. 4d. in 1859, while
in Great Britain it rose only from L2 7s. 8d. to L2 10s. during the same
period. Equality of taxation has never been wholly established, for to
this day a few quite unimportant taxes are not levied, or are levied on
a lower scale in Ireland;[101] but from 1858 onward we may regard the
taxation of the two countries as almost identically the same.

In the meantime a great revolution, also beginning at the time of the
famine, had taken place in the fiscal system of the United Kingdom. Free
Trade with the outside world had been established, and whatever we may
conclude about its effect, it had been established, as we know, with a
special view to British industrial interests, and without the smallest
concern for Irish interests, which were predominantly agricultural. It
was certainly followed by an immense industrial expansion and prosperity
in Great Britain; it was certainly initiated at the lowest point of
Ireland's moral and physical wretchedness. Opinions differ as to the
precise economic effect upon Ireland. Miss Murray, in her thoughtful and
exhaustive study of the commercial relations between England and
Ireland, holds that, as agricultural producers, the Irish lost far more
than they have gained as consumers of foodstuffs, while a number of
small and struggling rural industries, whose powerful counterparts in
Great Britain could easily withstand foreign competition, did undeniably
succumb in Ireland.

My own opinion is that the past influence upon Ireland of free trade, in
the first instance with Great Britain, and later with the outside world,
though a highly interesting and important topic in itself, is commonly
exaggerated, to the neglect of the vastly more important question of the
tenure of land. Free trade did not cause the famine. On the contrary,
the presage of the famine was one of the minor causes which induced Peel
to take up Cobden