control of that Police, pending its replacement by a new civil force.  It is easy enough in ways like this to show a balance in Ireland’s favour, and, at the same time, to cripple the responsibility of the Irish Legislature by transferring selected services from the Irish to the Imperial side of the account.  We can extend the process to Old Age Pensions, the Land Commission, and what not.  As I have repeatedly urged, this course is radically unsound.  As for the Police, there can be no responsible government without control of the agents of law and order.

By crediting Ireland with her whole “collected” revenue, we can give her at once a balance of half a million.  By freeing her from the payment of Old Age Pensions, we can make the balance three millions.  With the elimination of the Land Commission and the Police, we can make it five millions.  Then we can postulate an imaginary taxable capacity, an ideal contribution to Imperial services, and a hypothetical share of the National Debt, and so arrive at a Budget which will look well on paper, but which will deceive nobody, and be open to crushing criticism.

2. “Contract” Finance.—­It will be seen that both Mr. Gladstone’s schemes set up in Ireland—­though under the Bill of 1893 only after six years—­a dual system of taxation, Imperial and Irish, after the Federal model.  The revenue, “collected” or “true,” derived from Imperial taxes levied in Ireland, was to be paid, after the deduction of sums due to the Imperial Government on various accounts, into the Irish Exchequer.  And into the same Exchequer went the proceeds of taxes levied by Ireland herself.  The distinguishing feature of “Contract” finance is that it maintains the fiscal unity of the British Isles.  All taxation in Ireland would be permanently levied and collected, as before, by the Imperial Parliament, Ireland being allowed only the barren and illusory privilege of levying new additional taxes of her own.  Out of the Imperial Exchequer a lump sum of fixed amount, or a sum equivalent to the revenue collected in Ireland, would be handed over to Ireland, by contract, as it were, for the maintenance of the Administration.

The simplicity of this scheme seems to me to be its only merit.  It disposes of all complicated bookkeeping, all heart-burnings over “true” and “collected” revenue, and all controversies, for a long time at any rate, over an Irish contribution to the Empire; while it involves and immensely facilitates a subsidy based on the reservation of selected Irish services for Imperial management and payment.  On the other hand, it is not Home Rule.  It annihilates the responsibility of Ireland for her own fortunes, and is, indeed, altogether incompatible with what we know as responsible government.  Its germ appeared in the Irish Council Bill of 1907—­a Bill which did not pretend to set up anything approaching responsible government, and to which the scheme was therefore in a sense appropriate, though it must, I think, have produced mischievous results if it had been carried into law.[150]