The country is against its will saddled with a Viceregal Court, of which the Lord Lieutenant enjoys a salary twice as great as that of the President of the United States.  The government is conducted by more than forty boards, only one of which is responsible, through a Minister in the House of Commons, to the country.  Official returns show that Scotland, with a population slightly larger than that of Ireland, possesses 942 Government officials as against 2,691 in Ireland.  In Scotland the salaries of these public servants amount to less than L300,000, while in Ireland the corresponding cost is more than L1,000,000 per annum, showing that the average salaries in the poorer country are considerably higher than in the richer.  Of the L7,500,000 devoted to Irish services, L1,500,000 goes to the Post Office and Customs, while one half of the remainder is consumed by the salaries and pensions of policemen and officials.

To take a single example—­the Prison Boards of Scotland and Ireland work under identical Acts, dating from 1877.  It is instructive, therefore, to compare the conditions of the two.  The estimates for the year 1905 were calculated on the assumption that there were 120 fewer prisoners a day in Irish prisons than in Scotland.  In spite of this the cost of the Irish Board for the last year of which I have seen the figures was L144,597, and that of the Scottish Board was only L105,588.  The ratio between these figures is as 1.3 to 1, which is in nearly the same proportion as is the number of the officials on the two boards—­namely, 622 in Ireland and in Scotland 467, and this, too, in spite of the fact that further statistics show, namely, that there are five convicted criminals in Scotland for every three in Ireland.

These are a few facts which show the value of the case for the present state of affairs, based on the assumption that over-taxation is balanced by profligate expenditure.  The maintenance—­to take only one point—­of a police force about half the size of the United States army, when at the present time white gloves—­the symbol of a crimeless charge—­are being given to the judges on every circuit, is a state of affairs which is intolerable, while the small proportion which in the returns Ireland is shown to bear of the Imperial contribution is the result of the inclusion of the Viceregal and Civil Service charges, not, as should be the case, in the Imperial account, but in the separate Irish account.

As an instance showing how exorbitant exactions defeat their own end by diminishing, and not raising, the available revenue, it should be noted that in 1853 an income tax of 7d. in the pound raised L200,000 more than did an income tax of 8d. in the pound at the date of the Royal Commission.  Of the remedies which are suggested, the alteration of the Fiscal system, by making abatements in the Irish Excise and Customs, is not likely to be attempted.  Reduction of expenditure, liberating money which may be made