[91] E.g., 18 Vict.  Ch. 55, Sections 42 and 43.

[92] See Appendix, under the head of restrictions on “Irish Matters.”  For convenience, land legislation is included in the list, though it clearly belongs to a different category, and I have so dealt with it above.

[93] In the Bill of 1886 (Clause 11, Subsec. 7) and in the Bill of 1893 (Clause 8, Subsec. 3) power was given to alter the qualifications of the franchise, etc., for the Lower House—­in the former Bill after the first dissolution, in the latter after six years.

[94] In 1910, of the total Federal revenue of 675,511,715 dollars, 623,616,963 dollars were raised in this way, or twelve-thirteenths.  (Postal revenue, which balances Postal receipts, is excluded.)

[95] In 1909-10 Dominion revenue from Customs and Excise was 75,409,487 dollars.  Total ordinary expenditure (excluding capital accounts), 79,411,747 dollars.

[96] Estimate for 1910-11.  Total Federal revenue, L16,841,629; revenue from Customs and Excise, L111,700,000.  Total Federal expenditure L11,122,297.  L5,267,500 will be available for return to the State exchequers (see pp. 245-246).

CHAPTER XI

UNION FINANCE

I ask the reader to follow with particular care the following historical summary of Anglo-Irish finance.  None of it is irrelevant, I venture to say.  It is not possible to construct a financial scheme, or to criticize it when framed, without a fairly accurate knowledge of the historical facts.

I.

BEFORE THE UNION.[97]

Before the Union Ireland had a fiscal system distinct from that of Great Britain, a separate Exchequer, a separate Debt, a separate system of taxation, a separate Budget.  Yet she can never truly be said to have had financial independence, because she was never a truly self-governing country.  Until 1779, when the Protestant Volunteers protested with arms in their hands against the annihilation of Irish industries in the interest of British merchants and growers, her external trade and, consequently, her internal production, were absolutely at the mercy of Great Britain.  As I showed in Chapter I., Ireland was treated considerably worse than the most oppressed Colony, with permanently ruinous results.  On the other hand, her internal taxation, never above a million a year, and her Debt, never above two millions in amount, were not heavy.  But from 1779, through Grattan’s Parliament to the Union, a short period of twenty-one years, Ireland, though still governed on the ascendancy system by an unrepresentative and corrupt Parliament of exactly the same composition as before, nevertheless had financial independence in the sense that her Parliament had complete control of Irish taxation, revenue, and trade.  It was, moreover, in these financial matters that the Parliament