Debt.  Anglo-Irish finance teems with grim jokes of this sort; but the section was useful in either event.  With its terms before them, a Committee sat to consider the state of Ireland, with the result that, by an Act which came into operation on January 5, 1817, the Exchequers, Debts, revenues, and expenditures, but not as yet the taxes, of the two countries were amalgamated.  In Professor Oldham’s words,[100] “the corpse of Ireland’s insolvency was huddled into the grave, and no questions were to be asked.”  The whole expenditure, Imperial and local, of the United Kingdom, Ireland included, was to be defrayed out of a Consolidated Fund, and the arrangements, therefore, for a separate Irish contribution on a fixed basis to Imperial services were cancelled.  Henceforth her Imperial contribution, for anyone who troubled to calculate it, was represented by the excess of revenue raised within Ireland over the expenditure in Ireland.  A mutual free trade was also established, not instantaneously, but in the course of a few years.  By 1824 all duties, as between Ireland and England, had ceased, and in 1826 the custom-houses ceased to record the transit of goods between England and Ireland, except in articles such as spirits, on which a different excise duty was charged.  No statistics were compiled, therefore, of Anglo-Irish trade until ninety years later, when the Irish Department of Agriculture began to prepare returns.  Such was the origin of our Customs Union against the world (for, needless to say, those were still the days of high Protection), and it is instructive to compare it with the voluntary pacts of the German States and South African Colonies, and with their political results.

In one important point unification was left incomplete.  It was impossible in 1817 to equalize internal taxation in the two countries, though it was held desirable to do so, because Ireland could not have borne the higher British scale, and suffered enough under her own.  Regard, too, was had at first to those important words in the Act of Union which guaranteed to Ireland such “exemptions and abatements” as might appear fair.  But they were soon forgotten.  Without any inquiry into the taxable capacity of Ireland, the stamp, tea, and tobacco duties were equalized early in the period, the enhancement in Ireland of the last duty from 1s. to 3s. on raw tobacco, and from 1s. to 16s. on manufactured tobacco, laying an exceptionally heavy burden on the Irish poor.  Meanwhile the abolition, after the close of the war, of taxes representing about sixteen millions a year, and purely affecting Great Britain, gave a relief to her which Ireland did not feel.  But it was not until 1853, when Mr. Gladstone extended the income-tax to Ireland, and raised the Irish spirit duty, that the principle of “exemptions and abatements” was most seriously infringed.  Mr. Disraeli followed in 1855 with a further elevation of the spirit duty, which was finally equalized with the British duty