Great Britain     Ireland
Direct Taxes       50.6 per cent.    27.8 per cent. 
Indirect Taxes     49.4 per cent.    72.2 per cent.

These figures show very clearly to what an extent in Ireland taxation falls, not on the luxuries of the rich, but on the commodities which are to a great extent the necessaries of the poor.  The manner in which this state of things is maintained was expressed by Sir Robert Giffen in his evidence before the Royal Commission:—­

“It is only evident that in matters of taxation Ireland is virtually discriminated against by the character of the direct taxes which happen to be on articles of Irish consumption.”

The heavy duties on tea, tobacco, and alcohol—­articles which form a larger part of the family budget of the Irish peasant than of the English labourer—­are the causes of this burden.  The reasons for the larger consumption of what may be roughly called stimulants by the Irishman is undoubtedly to be found in climatic conditions, and also in the smaller amount of nourishing food which he is able to afford.  With regard to alcohol, the form in which it is most used in England—­namely, beer—­is subjected to a special exemption at the expense of the whiskey-drinking people of Ireland and Scotland.  Cider is not taxed.  The tax on whiskey is between two-thirds and three-fourths its price, while that on beer is one-sixth of its price; so that sixty gallons of beer bear the same weight of taxation as does one gallon of whiskey.  The usual standard of taxation of liquor is its alcoholic strength, but the special treatment accorded to the Englishman’s principal drink reduced—­according to the Royal Commissioners—­the taxation to which, in proportion to its alcohol it should be subjected, from 1s. to 2d. per gallon.  Even in respect of tea and tobacco, the inequitable treatment of Ireland is obvious to any one who considers that what is spoken of as equality of taxation is, in reality, identical taxation on articles consumed in vastly different proportions in Great Britain and Ireland.

The argument by which the charge that Ireland is overtaxed was rebutted by the late Unionist Government was that the balance is restored by the amount of money spent in the administration of that country.  When the complaint is heard that she is contributing at this day no less a sum than,L9,750,000 to revenue, the answer is made that she has no grievance since the cost of Irish services amounts to more than L7,500,000, the balance, a paltry two and a quarter millions, forming her Imperial contribution.

Ireland is being bled to death, and to her complaints the answer is that she is being expensively administered.  To fleece a poor man of his pittance and to justify the action by telling him that it is on every appurtenance of a spendthrift to which he objects that it is being spent is scarcely to provide a satisfactory justification.  The two cases are exactly parallel, and it is a weak position which has to entrench itself behind the fact that the cost of government per head is in Ireland double what it is in England.