First of all, let us dispose finally of the Federal analogy.  In Chapter X. I showed that the framework of Home Rule cannot be Federal, because the conditions of Federation do not exist in the United Kingdom.  One of the invariable features of a Federation is the Federal control of Customs and Excise, but I pointed out that an equally invariable condition precedent to Federation was the willingness on the part of a self-supporting State, previously possessing complete financial independence, to abandon its individual control over this realm of taxation to a Federal Government of its own choosing,[141] and that no such condition existed in the case of Ireland.  But some features of Federal finance undoubtedly may be made to show a superficial analogy to Anglo-Irish conditions, and may therefore have an attraction for those who shrink from giving Ireland financial independence.  In the first place, it is possible to find Federal precedents for the payment out of the common purse of certain large items of Irish expenditure.  There is no precedent for the payment of Police, but Old Age Pensions, for example, are paid in Australia by the Commonwealth, not by the States.  The chief point of interest, however, is the mechanism of Federal finance.  The Australian and Canadian Federations are the only two which suggest even a remote parallel.  There the subordinate States are actually “subsidized” by regular annual payments out of Federal revenues, mainly derived from Customs and Excise, and in the case of Australia, as I observed at p. 245, the process at present entails an elaborate system of bookkeeping to distinguish between the “collected” and “true” revenue of the several States, similar in kind to the calculations now made by the Treasury for ascertaining the “collected” and “true” revenue derived from Ireland, Scotland, and England.[142]

In Australia this system of bookkeeping is discredited, although the recent attempt by a Commonwealth Referendum to abolish both it and the financial system of which it forms a part just failed.  It is to be hoped that, whatever financial scheme is adopted for Ireland, this bad colonial precedent, together with the precedent of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, will not be made pretexts for perpetuating a system whose defects are so glaring, and which is a source of continual dissatisfaction to Ireland.  If Irish Customs and Excise are to be outside Irish control, while their proceeds are to be credited to Ireland, let her whole collected revenue from those sources be credited to her, in spite of the excessive allocation that step would involve.