ned nothing more than a rough return showing that
between 1841 and 1871 the gross tax revenue per head of the population
had risen in Ireland from 9s. 6.7d. to L1 6s. 2.2d. and had fallen in
Great Britain from L2 9s. 9.5d. to L2 4s. 1.6d. For the first time also
it was shown that the national beverages of England and Ireland, beer
and whisky, respectively, were taxed in a ratio unfair to Ireland. In
1886 Mr. Gladstone, in preparing his first Home Rule Bill, had to
re-open the question of the relative resources of Ireland and Great
Britain for the first time since the Union, because he proposed a fixed
annual contribution, unchangeable for thirty years, from Ireland towards
the Imperial services. He fixed the contribution at one-fifteenth or
approximately half that of two-seventeenths fixed by Pitt in 1800, and
the new figure was certainly not too low. In 1888 the question was again
incidentally raised by Mr. Goschen, who apportioned certain equivalent
grants towards local taxation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the
proportion of 80, 11, 9, apparently on the principle that those were the
proportions in which each country respectively contributed to Imperial
expenditure. Mr. Gladstone, in preparing the Home Rule Bill of 1893,
made investigations which threw additional light on the true amount of
revenue derived from Ireland, with allowance made for revenue from
dutiable goods taxed in Ireland but consumed in Great Britain, and _vice
versa_, but his financial scheme, as revised in the course of the
Session and passed by the House of Commons, evaded the crucial issue by
making Ireland's contribution to Imperial services a quota, one-third,
of her true annual revenue. This quota, moreover, was indirectly
reduced by temporary subsidies in aid of Irish charges (_e.g._, for
Police) and was estimated, with these deductions, not to exceed at the
outset one-fortieth.

III.

THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION OF 1894-1896.

It was now apparent that, with or without Home Rule, the whole subject
needed serious investigation, and in 1894, after the defeat of Mr.
Gladstone's Bill, a Royal Commission under the Presidency of Mr. Hugh
Childers was appointed to consider the "Financial Relations between
Great Britain and Ireland." Their Report deserves careful study, because
it contains within it all the essential materials for forming a judgment
upon the financial problem of to-day. All that it lacks are the
complementary fig