VI.

IRISH CONTROL OF CUSTOMS AND EXCISE.

Let us now come to close quarters with this important issue.  The grand argument on the affirmative side is that the products of these duties represent nearly four-fifths of the tax revenue collected in Ireland.  What are the objections?

We need scarcely consider the general objection, sometimes made ostensibly in the interests of Ireland, that her public men have little financial experience.  The fact is true, and it is not their fault.  But the financial scheme cannot reasonably be based on a recognition of a temporary lack of experience.

I place Customs and Excise together because I believe there is no serious question of making a distinction between the two, and of allowing Ireland to levy and collect her own Excise duties, while denying her authority over Customs.  It is true that until 1860 such a distinction was made, and a lower Excise duty levied upon Irish than upon British spirits;[139] but the tendency in all modern States is to make the authority over Customs the same as that over Excise, and any departure from that principle, in the case of modern Ireland, is likely to cause considerable inconvenience.  License Duties, which are included under the head of Excise, may, no doubt, without much inconvenience, be differentiated from the rest, but their Irish proceeds (L284,000) are too small to influence the question.

Excise, then, follows Customs.  What are the objections to giving Ireland, like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, control over her own Customs?  Without doubt, the establishment of a new Customs barrier between Ireland and Great Britain is in itself a drawback.  The Custom-house machinery exists, of course, at present, because Ireland is an island; nor would the additional function of checking British as well as foreign imports into Ireland cause any great increase of expense; but since the great bulk of Irish external trade is with Great Britain, there will unquestionably be a certain amount of inconvenience and expense both to Ireland and Great Britain in submitting merchandise on both sides of the Irish Channel to the passage of a Customs barrier.

That seems to be the limit to which criticism can justly go in the case of Ireland and Great Britain.  That is as far as it goes in the analogous case of New Zealand and the Australian Commonwealth, where a small island State has a separate Customs system from that of a large, wealthy, and populous neighbour of the same race, and with many identical interests.  That is as far as it goes in the parallel case of little Newfoundland and the great Dominion of Canada.  Neither the Dominion nor the Commonwealth claim that proximity, power, and racial identity give them the right to control the trade and taxation of their small independent neighbours, nor does the smallest friction result from the mutual independence.  On the contrary,