the State to the Commonwealth.  The system caused general dissatisfaction, owing, as the Australian Official Year Book puts it, “to the practical impossibility of ensuring that in every case a consuming State will be duly credited with revenue collected on its behalf in a distributing State.”  That is the well-founded complaint of Ireland in regard to the Treasury returns.  Hitherto in Australia efforts to change the system for another allocating the surplus on a basis of population have not been successful.[105] The Canadian Federal Constitution uses the basis of population for the distribution of small subsidies to the Provinces, but complaints have arisen as to its fairness.  British Columbia, for example, for a long time complained that her subsidy was too small, one of the grounds being that her consumption of dutiable goods was unusually large.  No means existed of verifying this complaint by figures.[106]

With this explanatory digression about a very important feature of Anglo-Irish finance, I return to the findings of the Royal Commission of 1894-1896.  The figures supplied to them were as shown on the opposite page.

It will be noticed that the average “true” revenue of Ireland was stationary at a little over five millions from 1820 to 1850, rose with a bound to seven and a half millions with the equalization of taxes in the decade 1850-1860, and remained stationary at that figure for the remaining thirty-four years.  Expenditure in Ireland quadrupled in the whole sixty-four years; and the net contribution to Imperial services, after rising from three and a half millions (in round numbers) in 1820 to five and a half millions in 1860, fell automatically, as the expenditure rose, and had stood at two millions from 1890 afterwards.  Population had fallen by two millions, but the “true” revenue raised per head of population rose from 15s. 5d. in 1819 to L1 13s. 5d. in 1894, while the local expenditure rose from 4s. 7d. per head in 1820 to L1 5s. in 1894.

STATEMENT SHOWING THE ESTIMATED LOCAL EXPENDITURE INCURRED IN IRELAND, AND THE BALANCE OF TRUE REVENUE WHICH IS AVAILABLE FOR IMPERIAL SERVICES AFTER SUCH EXPENDITURE HAS BEEN MET: 

Revenue as Adjustment Estimated Estimated Balance Population
Collected (+) or (-) True Local available
Revenue Expenditures for
Imperial
Services
Decadal figures.  L L L L L -------------------------------
------------------------------------------------- 1819-20 5,253,909 + 2,655 5,256,564 1,564,880 3,691,684 6,801,000 1829-30 4,161,217 +1,040,908 5,502,125 1,345,579 4,156,576 7,767,401 1839-40 4,571,150 + 841,739 5,412,889 1,789,567 3,626,322 8,175,124 1849-50 4,338,091 + 523,374 4,861,465 2,247,687 2,613,778 6,574,278 1859-60 7,097,994 + 602,430 7,700,334 2,304,334 5,396,000 5,798,967 1869-70 7,331,058 + 95,274 7,426,332 2,938,122 4,488,210 5,412,377 1879-80 7,831,316 — 550,520 7,280,856 4,054,549 3,226,307 5,174,836 1889-90 9,005,932 -1,271,254 7,734,678 5,057,708 2,676,970 4,704,750