Local Government on the British pattern was, as I have already described, extended to Ireland only in 1898.  The money now raised in Ireland by Local Taxation is about L4,800,000, exclusive of the Grants in Aid which we are now considering, and which appear, rightly, on the national balance-sheet because they come from the common purse.[120] They are based on different principles, and originated in many different ways.  Some are fixed annual sums, determined either by some arbitrary standard or (as in the case of the Licence Duty grants and the Customs and Excise grants[121]) on the Irish proceeds of certain duties in a year taken as standard.  The Estate Duty grants still vary with the total product of duties in the United Kingdom, and are still allocated on the proportion settled by Mr. Goschen in 1888—­namely, 9 parts to Ireland, 11 to Scotland, and 80 to England.[122] If the proportion were to be revised now, and, on Mr. Goschen’s method, made to correspond to the respective estimated contributions to Imperial Services, Ireland, instead of getting L418,000, would get nothing at all.  The largest item in the list—­namely, the “Agricultural Grant,” a fixed annual sum of L728,000, dating from the Local Government Act of 1898—­was designed partly to reconcile Irish landlords to the passage of that Act.  Nearly half of it represented the remission of the landlord’s half-share of the poor-rate on agricultural land, as estimated in the standard year 1896-97.  The English precedent for this was the Agricultural Rates Act of 1896, which relieved the English owner of agricultural land in a similar way.  Irish conditions were so different, however, that it was felt necessary in this case to balance the landlord’s boon with an equivalent boon to the tenant; so that half the tenant’s share of the county cess was also remitted.  The result was a disproportionately large grant as compared with those received by England and Scotland.[123] We must remark, as one of the minor intricacies of Irish finance, that all these grants do not actually go in relief of Local Taxation.  Some of them are diverted to public Departments, such as the Board of Intermediate Education, the Congested Districts Board, and the Department of Agriculture.

All these grants will cease, as such, after Home Rule, while their amount must be reckoned as part of the cost of Irish Government.  The Irish Parliament will have to revise the whole system of relief to Local Taxation and establish it on some simple and rational basis.  Meanwhile, it is important to remember that the Irish grants form the major part of the Guarantee Fund set up by the Land Purchase Acts, and, until the last amending Land Act of 1909, were chargeable—­the Estate Duties Grant, hi the first instance, the Agricultural Grant in the second instance—­with the increasingly heavy losses incurred in floating Land Stock below par.  In 1908-09 the sums so withdrawn amounted to L90,000.  That liability was removed by Mr. Birrell’s Act, and they now remain chargeable only with any arrears in the annuities paid by the purchasing tenants.  This is a negligible liability, and should properly be placed upon the Irish Government as a whole, which, if it pleased, could recover the money from localities.[124]