, the Provinces being vested only with the
concurrent right of direct taxation within their respective borders
(B.N. America Act, Clauses 91 and 92). In practice, nearly the whole
Federal tax revenue is derived from Customs and Excise. We have no
materials for a comparison of gross and net provincial contributions,
because no records are compiled. Under an Act of 1907, revising the
former arrangements, two small subsidies, forming a fixed charge on the
gross Federal revenue, and bearing no specific proportion to the income
from Customs and Excise, are given to each Province.

1. A subsidy (from L20,000 to L40,000) based on the total provincial
population.

2. A payment of 80 cents per head of the provincial population.

Both together are very small by comparison with the Australian payments.
Neither is really a subsidy, though it is given that name, but the
return of a surplus indirectly contributed. It is, indeed, conceivable
that a new and poor Province might actually contribute less than she
received back. One Province, British Columbia, having long complained
that she contributed far more than her share, and received back too
little, obtained an exceptional grant of L20,000 under the Act of
1907.[147] The sums raised independently in each Province for the
support of the provincial administration are, as in Australia, derived
to a very slight extent from direct taxation, and to a very large extent
from public property; not, as in Australia, from railways, tramways,
etc., but mainly from vast tracts of public land. In this respect the
Provinces resemble the Dominion, which derives a large revenue from the
same source.

In three vital points, then, Anglo-Irish finance differs from that of
the Colonial Federations. Ireland's whole net income comes from taxes;
she needs it all; and her economic conditions are totally different from
those of Great Britain. So far from borrowing anything from Federal
finance, we should deduce from it the moral of financial independence
for Ireland. With all the powerful centripetal forces, moral and
material, which originally united, and now hold together, the federated
States of Australia and Canada, there is continual controversy, and
sometimes considerable friction, over finance, generally in connection
with the position of the poorer Provinces or States. Some problems are
still unsolved. Good authorities, among them Sir Arthur Bourinot, think
that the Canadian subsidies are unsound