ch has a population slightly greater, and more than a
third of that of England (L26,121,500), which has a population eight
times as great.

When we search the various tables of detailed expenditure, three
prominent items arrest our attention:

Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police[125] L1,464,500
Old Age Pensions L2,408,000
Public (_i.e._, Primary) Education L1,632,000

L5,504,500

Those three items may be said to epitomize the history of Ireland under
the Union--coercion, pauperization, deficient education. The first two
are, of course, intimately connected. The existing cost of police,
surviving needlessly at the monstrous figure shown, represents the past
cost of enforcing laws economically hurtful to Ireland. The economic
hurt is reflected in the cost of Old Age Pensions paid to a
disproportionately large number of old people, below the official
standard of wealth, in a country drained by emigration for seventy years
past of its strongest sons and daughters. Police in Ireland costs twice
as much as in England and Scotland, where (with the exception of the
_London Metropolitan Police_) it is a local, not a national charge,
while Irish Old Age Pensions cost in 1910-11 more than twice as much as
Scottish Pensions, and amounted to two-fifths of English Pensions.[126]
With full allowance for excess payments owing to the lack of all birth
records prior to a certain date, the Irish figure is relatively
enormous. It is L100,000 greater than the whole cost of Irish Government
in 1860, and, with the addition made in the estimates of the present
year, it is just a million more than what, according to Sir David
Barbour's reasoning, would have been the whole cost of Irish Government
in 1893-94, had Irish expenditure, like Irish revenue, been in
proportion to the taxable capacity of Ireland.

I touched upon the Irish aspect of the policy of Old Age Pensions at p.
181. Whatever the pecuniary charge, I suggest that it is absolutely
necessary for Ireland in the future to control both payment and policy,
and she might find it in her best interest, with due notice and due
regard to present interests, to halve the scale of pensions. It is not a
question of the general policy of Old Age Pensions, but of the
applicability of a certain scale to Ireland, where agricultural wages
(for example) average only 11s. 3d. as compared with 18s.