he held, as I have already indicated, that unduly heavy taxation in Ireland was already compensated for by an excess of local expenditure in Ireland as compared with Great Britain.  But how, on its merits, and apart from the question of taxation, could such an excess be justified?  The Act of Union had provided for indiscriminate expenditure in the event of a fiscal union.  Most of the other Commissioners, indeed, had objected to the idea of distinguishing between “Imperial” expenditure and “local” expenditure, and striking a balance called an “Imperial contribution,” without, at the same time, distinguishing politically between Ireland and Great Britain.  In other words, they took up the not very logical position that Ireland must be considered as a separate entity for purposes of finance owing to the phrase about “abatements and exemptions,” but not for purposes of expenditure.  Whether this was a correct interpretation of the Act of Union has always been a matter of dispute, but the practical problem is little affected thereby.  Sir David Barbour thought it an incorrect interpretation, and reached the more logical position that Ireland, both for revenue and expenditure, could be regarded as a separate entity.  This view enabled him to put forward an argument which, while ostensibly palliating the over-taxation of Ireland, in reality condemned the whole of the political system established by the Union.  We can, he said, in effect, rightly distinguish between Imperial and local expenditure, and it is permissible to spend more on Ireland than on Great Britain.  By so spending more we not only cancel our debt to Ireland, but make her a present of a million which would otherwise go to swell her contribution to Imperial purposes.  Now, to get at the pith of this argument, the reader must bear in mind what Sir David Barbour thought it needless to remark upon, that Ireland had, and has, a separate quasi-colonial system of administration of her own, but outside her own control, a system of which he approved.  In other words, besides having to be considered in finance as a “separate entity,” she was to a large extent in actual fact, politically, a “separate entity,” though not a self-governing entity, to which through the channel of the Irish Government Departments a special large quota for local expenditure could be easily allocated.  As an economist, therefore, and as an upholder of the strangely paradoxical system set up by the so-called “Union,” Sir David Barbour was absolutely consistent.

So were Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie in coming to diametrically opposite conclusions.  The crux of the discussion, stripped of academical reasoning, was simple.  Everything turned, obviously, on the nature, amount, and origin of Irish expenditure.  Sir David Barbour had passed lightly over these vital points, recommending only that any future saving of expenditure in Ireland ought to be used for Irish purposes—­a further admission of Ireland’s