and which, as they admit, contain an element of guesswork.  The matter is an exceedingly important one to Ireland, because ever since 1870 an increasingly heavy deduction has been made by the Treasury from her “collected” revenue, and her “true” revenue has proportionately diminished.  Part of this deduction is no doubt due to the fact that her exports of tobacco and liquor have, in recent times, much exceeded her imports, but the margin for error is nevertheless large.  Mr. Gladstone, in framing his Home Rule Bill of 1886, was so sensible of the inherent difficulties of the calculation that, while retaining Customs and Excise under Imperial control, he credited to the Irish Exchequer the whole of the revenue collected within Ireland.  On the balance of Anglo-Irish exchange in dutiable articles, as roughly estimated at that time, this provision meant an annual allowance to Ireland of nearly a million and a half pounds, the principal reason being that Ireland, which is a larger manufacturer of spirits and tobacco, was exporting more than she consumed of these commodities.  In the Bill of 1893, as part of a wholly different financial scheme, Mr. Gladstone abandoned the plan just described, and provided for the annual calculation of “true” Irish revenue, as distinguished from “collected” revenue; but it is a proof of the obscurity and intricacy of the whole business that the Treasury officials made a mistake of L400,000 in the initial calculation, with the result that Mr. Gladstone had to recast his financial scheme from top to bottom.

In the Return of 1894, as presented to the Royal Commission, this error was eliminated, but the method of calculation remained imperfect.  Nobody knows now what the true figures are, and there is good reason to think that Irish revenue has always been, and still is, substantially underestimated.

The same obscurity shrouded, and still shrouds, the “true” Irish revenue from income-tax and stamps, whose proceeds it is exceedingly difficult to trace under a system of unitary finance, and which are traced by the Treasury in a fashion again admittedly unreliable.[104]

In regard to taxes on consumption the same difficulty has been met with in Australia since the federation of the Colonies and the delegation to the Commonwealth Government of exclusive control over Customs and Excise.  The product of these duties makes up the bulk of Australian revenue, and is far too large for the needs of the Commonwealth Government.  The Constitution of 1900 provided that the surplus should be returned to the individual States in proportion to their “true” contributions to the revenue, and for the calculation of these “true” contributions an elaborate system of book-keeping was instituted, in order to trace the ultimate place of consumption of dutiable articles.  Each State was then credited with its “true” revenue, and debited, among other things, with a proportionate share of the expense of any Department transferred by the Constitution from