1, as
compared with L30,000. (7) Public Works and Buildings in Ireland,
L273,370, as compared with L215,000. Even with allowance for
over-estimates, especially in the last of these items,[132] we must
anticipate an increase of nearly half a million under the above heads,
to which we must add L150,000 recently allocated by the Road Board to
Ireland for the year 1911-12, and L34,750 already allocated by the
Development Commissioners. If Ireland comes prematurely into the
National Insurance scheme, and assumes eventual financial responsibility
for her share of the cost, that will be an additional source of expense;
but it is to be hoped that her leaders, in common prudence, will
henceforth endeavour to stem the rising flood of Irish expenditure, and
so facilitate the retrenchments imperatively necessary under Home Rule.
As it is, the total outgoings of the current year (1911-12), swelled by
the increases shown above, will probably amount to L12,000,000, while
this total will in its turn be added to by the office costs of the Irish
Legislature and the salaries of Ministers.

The scheme framed cannot assume immediate economies, and a responsible
Ireland alone can decide the nature and extent of the drastic economies
which must be made in the future. Beyond the brief remarks and hints
made in the course of this chapter, I myself venture only to lay down
the broad proposition that, to the last farthing, Irish revenue must
govern and limit Irish expenditure. For any hardship entailed in
achieving that aim Ireland will find superabundant compensation in the
moral independence which is the foundation of national welfare. She will
be sorely tempted to sell part of her freedom for a price. At whatever
cost, she will be wise to resist.

If Irish revenue is to be the measure of Irish expenditure, it follows
that it must be wholly, or at any rate predominately, under Irish
control. Let us look a little more closely, therefore, into its amount
and composition.

III.

IRISH REVENUE.

As I have already pointed out, in order to arrive at the present revenue
of Ireland, our best course is to take the mean tax revenue of the two
years 1909-10 and 1910-11, and to add to it the non-tax revenue of
1910-11, which was, of course, unaffected by the delay in passing the
Budget of 1909. For clearness, however, I first set out separately the
Irish figures of these two years, distinguishing between tax revenue and
non-tax revenue, and givi