[100] Eight lectures delivered in the National University, Dublin, in 1911.

[101] Inhabited house duty, railway passenger tax, carriages, armorial bearings, etc.  The license for dogs is half the English scale.

[102] On Foster’s Corn Law of 1784, see p. 51.

[103] The text of the unanimous conclusions was as follows: 

1.  That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, be considered as separate entities.

2.  That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear.

3.  That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and 1860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances.

4.  That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden.

5.  That, whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth.

[104] Detailed criticism of the current Treasury accounts under this head will be found on pp. 276-278.

[105] A referendum taken on April 13, 1910, defeated the new proposals.  See “Report of Premiers’ Conference held at Brisbane, May, 1907” (Commonwealth Parliamentary Sessional Paper, No. 13, 1907), and for a clear statement of the whole subject, the “Year-Book (1911) of the Commonwealth of Australia.” (The relevant clauses of the Constitutional Act are Nos. 88 to 93.) The reasons for the failure of the system were summarized as follows: 

“1.  The trouble and expense which the necessary record entails.

“2.  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.

“3.  The difficulty involved in equitably determining the amount to be debited to the several States in respect of general Commonwealth expenses.

“4.  The uncertainty on the part of the State Governments as to the amount which will become available.

“5.  The impossibility of securing independent State and Commonwealth finance.”

See also pp. 295-299.

[106] See Proceedings of the Conference of Provincial Premiers, 1906, at Ottawa (Canadian Sessional Papers, vol. xl.), especially McBride’s Memorandum for British Columbia.  Numerous other grounds for special treatment were alleged—­e.g., abnormal cost of civil government, due to vast extent of Province.

[107] Final Report, p. 24 (Census figures of 1891).

[108] Final Report, p. 122.

[109] Final Report, p. 50.

[110] Ibid., pp. 48, 49.

[111] Ibid., pp. 51-54.

[112] They were at issue here with Mr. Childers, who, in his Draft Report, proposed halving the rates on Irish railways and further endowing the Congested Districts Board.  But Mr. Childers, though a Home Ruler, felt himself bound by the Terms of Reference not to suggest a Home Rule solution.