cess of local expenditure in Ireland
as compared with Great Britain. But how, on its merits, and apart from
the question of taxation, could such an excess be justified? The Act of
Union had provided for indiscriminate expenditure in the event of a
fiscal union. Most of the other Commissioners, indeed, had objected to
the idea of distinguishing between "Imperial" expenditure and "local"
expenditure, and striking a balance called an "Imperial contribution,"
without, at the same time, distinguishing politically between Ireland
and Great Britain. In other words, they took up the not very logical
position that Ireland must be considered as a separate entity for
purposes of finance owing to the phrase about "abatements and
exemptions," but not for purposes of expenditure. Whether this was a
correct interpretation of the Act of Union has always been a matter of
dispute, but the practical problem is little affected thereby. Sir David
Barbour thought it an incorrect interpretation, and reached the more
logical position that Ireland, both for revenue and expenditure, could
be regarded as a separate entity. This view enabled him to put forward
an argument which, while ostensibly palliating the over-taxation of
Ireland, in reality condemned the whole of the political system
established by the Union. We can, he said, in effect, rightly
distinguish between Imperial and local expenditure, and it is
permissible to spend more on Ireland than on Great Britain. By so
spending more we not only cancel our debt to Ireland, but make her a
present of a million which would otherwise go to swell her contribution
to Imperial purposes. Now, to get at the pith of this argument, the
reader must bear in mind what Sir David Barbour thought it needless to
remark upon, that Ireland had, and has, a separate quasi-colonial system
of administration of her own, but outside her own control, a system of
which he approved. In other words, besides having to be considered in
finance as a "separate entity," she was to a large extent in actual
fact, politically, a "separate entity," though not a self-governing
entity, to which through the channel of the Irish Government Departments
a special large quota for local expenditure could be easily allocated.
As an economist, therefore, and as an upholder of the strangely
paradoxical system set up by the so-called "Union," Sir David Barbour
was absolutely consistent.

So were Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie in com