000).

L L L
"True" Revenue 89,286,978 7,568,649 96,855,627
Local Expenditure 30,618,586 5,602,555 36,221,141
Net contribution to Imperial
Services 58,668,392 1,966,094 60,634,486

Great Britain, though raising in "true" revenue between eleven and
twelve times as much as Ireland, was costing only between five and six
times as much to administer as Ireland, and was therefore contributing
to Imperial services twenty-eight times as much as Ireland.

Now the Commissioners had stated that the taxable capacity of Ireland
was not one-eleventh, but, at the utmost, one-twentieth --in other
words, that she ought to contribute not more than one-twentieth of the
United Kingdom revenue. On that basis she should as we have seen, have
been showing a revenue in 1893-94 not of L7,568,649, but of L4,842,781.

But, if her local expenditure had also been proportionate to her true
taxable capacity of one-twentieth, instead of standing at L5,602,555, it
would have stood at L1,811,057, or two-thirds less, while if her net
contribution to Imperial services had likewise been a twentieth, instead
of paying L1,966,094, she would have had to pay L3,031,724, or a million
more.

The conclusion, therefore, might be extracted from the figures that,
although by hypothesis overtaxed, Ireland was drawing a balance of
profit, because, by having more spent on her--or, to put it in another
way, by costing more to govern, she paid a million less to the common
purse than if she had been taxed according to her capacity.

This was precisely the conclusion drawn by one member of the Commission,
Sir David Barbour, and implicitly acquiesced in by one other member, Sir
Thomas Sutherland. All the other Commissioners agreed that there was
something seriously amiss, and declined to regard the disproportionately
high expenditure on Ireland as compensation for the over-high taxation.
The O'Conor Don, as successor in the chairmanship to Mr. Childers, and
four others contented themselves with setting forth the facts, but made
no recommendations, on the ground that the Commission had not been asked
to make any. Mr. Childers, who died before the completion of the
inquiry, left a Draft Report recommending that a special grant,
amounting to two millions a year, should for the future be allocated to
Ireland. The other six members, di