We now reach the category (b) “Voted,” and find in the Irish column the truly enormous sum of L8,026,000—­nearly double that of Scotland (L4,180,500), which has a population slightly greater, and more than a third of that of England (L26,121,500), which has a population eight times as great.

When we search the various tables of detailed expenditure, three prominent items arrest our attention: 

Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police[125]  L1,464,500
Old Age Pensions                                  L2,408,000
Public (i.e., Primary) Education           L1,632,000

L5,504,500

Those three items may be said to epitomize the history of Ireland under the Union—­coercion, pauperization, deficient education.  The first two are, of course, intimately connected.  The existing cost of police, surviving needlessly at the monstrous figure shown, represents the past cost of enforcing laws economically hurtful to Ireland.  The economic hurt is reflected in the cost of Old Age Pensions paid to a disproportionately large number of old people, below the official standard of wealth, in a country drained by emigration for seventy years past of its strongest sons and daughters.  Police in Ireland costs twice as much as in England and Scotland, where (with the exception of the London Metropolitan Police) it is a local, not a national charge, while Irish Old Age Pensions cost in 1910-11 more than twice as much as Scottish Pensions, and amounted to two-fifths of English Pensions.[126] With full allowance for excess payments owing to the lack of all birth records prior to a certain date, the Irish figure is relatively enormous.  It is L100,000 greater than the whole cost of Irish Government in 1860, and, with the addition made in the estimates of the present year, it is just a million more than what, according to Sir David Barbour’s reasoning, would have been the whole cost of Irish Government in 1893-94, had Irish expenditure, like Irish revenue, been in proportion to the taxable capacity of Ireland.

I touched upon the Irish aspect of the policy of Old Age Pensions at p. 181.  Whatever the pecuniary charge, I suggest that it is absolutely necessary for Ireland in the future to control both payment and policy, and she might find it in her best interest, with due notice and due regard to present interests, to halve the scale of pensions.  It is not a question of the general policy of Old Age Pensions, but of the applicability of a certain scale to Ireland, where agricultural wages (for example) average only 11s. 3d. as compared with 18s. 4d. for England, and 19s. 7d. for Scotland.[127] Of all ways of remedying a backward economic condition, that of excessive pensions is the worst.