iting Ireland with her whole "collected" revenue, we can give her
at once a balance of half a million. By freeing her from the payment of
Old Age Pensions, we can make the balance three millions. With the
elimination of the Land Commission and the Police, we can make it five
millions. Then we can postulate an imaginary taxable capacity, an ideal
contribution to Imperial services, and a hypothetical share of the
National Debt, and so arrive at a Budget which will look well on paper,
but which will deceive nobody, and be open to crushing criticism.

2. "_Contract_" _Finance_.--It will be seen that both Mr. Gladstone's
schemes set up in Ireland--though under the Bill of 1893 only after six
years--a dual system of taxation, Imperial and Irish, after the Federal
model. The revenue, "collected" or "true," derived from Imperial taxes
levied in Ireland, was to be paid, after the deduction of sums due to
the Imperial Government on various accounts, into the Irish Exchequer.
And into the same Exchequer went the proceeds of taxes levied by Ireland
herself. The distinguishing feature of "Contract" finance is that it
maintains the fiscal unity of the British Isles. All taxation in Ireland
would be permanently levied and collected, as before, by the Imperial
Parliament, Ireland being allowed only the barren and illusory privilege
of levying new additional taxes of her own. Out of the Imperial
Exchequer a lump sum of fixed amount, or a sum equivalent to the revenue
_collected_ in Ireland, would be handed over to Ireland, by contract, as
it were, for the maintenance of the Administration.

The simplicity of this scheme seems to me to be its only merit. It
disposes of all complicated bookkeeping, all heart-burnings over "true"
and "collected" revenue, and all controversies, for a long time at any
rate, over an Irish contribution to the Empire; while it involves and
immensely facilitates a subsidy based on the reservation of selected
Irish services for Imperial management and payment. On the other hand,
it is not Home Rule. It annihilates the responsibility of Ireland for
her own fortunes, and is, indeed, altogether incompatible with what we
know as responsible government. Its germ appeared in the Irish Council
Bill of 1907--a Bill which did not pretend to set up anything
approaching responsible government, and to which the scheme was
therefore in a sense appropriate, though it must, I think, have produced
mischievous results if it had b