to serve a useful purpose, is obviously the first step, but any scheme of allocation of large sums for Irish development, without full and proper financial control, will undoubtedly fail to meet the case.  The multiplication of irresponsible boards must be stopped, and to what extent anything, save economies in expenditure, can be effected without far larger changes remains a moot point.  Of one thing, at any rate, one may be certain—­the present Liberal Government when in Opposition joined forces with the Irish members in driving home the tremendous admissions of the Royal Commissioners, and it is impossible to think that, now they are in power, they will repudiate their obligations, the more so as the present Chancellor of the Exchequer last year announced the intention of the Government to see how far it is possible to adjust the financial relations between the two kingdoms on a fairer basis.

Sir Hercules Langrishe, the friend and correspondent of Edmund Burke, is said to have accounted for the swampy condition of the Phoenix Park by saying—­“The English Government are too much engaged in draining the rest of the kingdom to find time to attend to it.”

Enough has been said to show that the process of which Sir Hercules spoke is still going on.  One would have thought that counsels of prudence would have made an end of it.  It remains to be seen whether the uncontestable facts to which they themselves have subscribed will prevail with the Government.  “The liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of England” are concerned in it now, as truly as when Pitt spoke.  Moreover, it is one of the instances in which the claims of justice and of expediency coincide.  The findings of the Financial Relations’ Commission fully justified the attitude of the Irish Party to the proposal, under Mr. Gladstone’s Bill, that the Irish contribution to the Imperial Treasury should be one-fourteenth of that of Great Britain, while Mr. Parnell declared that it ought to have been one-twentieth.  The population, since the publication of the Report of the Commission, has decreased by a quarter of a million, but taxation has increased from,L7,500,000 to L10,500,000.  If Ireland had secured the fixed contribution, against the height of which she protested, she would nevertheless have been guarded from such a disproportionate rise of taxation.

Whatever test be taken, be it population, a comparison of exports and of imports, the consumption of certain dutiable articles, relative assessments to death duties, income tax, or the estimated value of commodities of primary importance consumed, every one of them shows the relative backwardness of Ireland as compared with Great Britain, in view of which the fact that the cost of government per head of population is double in Ireland what it is in England, shows the extent to which the one is liable in damages to the other.  The increased expenditure on the navy obviously does not benefit equally the two countries, of which the one only has dockyards and manufactories, and this is especially the case seeing that the country which lacks these things is also without a commerce needing defence; while any advantage resulting from a portion of the army being quartered in Ireland is minimised when it is found that arms and accoutrements are purchased in England.