Now, for two reasons, I do not propose to make any exhaustive inquiry into the accuracy of Treasury adjustments for “true” revenue.  My first reason is, that full material for calculation cannot be obtained by any private individual, and could not be obtained and worked up even by the Treasury without an enormous expenditure of time and trouble.  The most careful inquiry I have seen is embodied in an exceedingly able pamphlet by “an Irishman,” entitled “The Financial Relations of Ireland with the Imperial Exchequer,” and I mention below a few of the criticisms made by the writer.  His and other investigations seem to prove that Irish revenue is considerably underestimated, perhaps by half a million.[134] My second reason is that errors of adjustment in either direction cannot affect in any substantial way the kind of financial scheme we are to adopt in the Home Rule Bill.

Let us fix our attention, then, on the second of the two columns in the table on p. 276, showing the aggregate “true” revenue of Ireland at the present day.  Disregard the non-tax revenue from the various postal services (which represents payment for services rendered, and is swallowed up by an excess on the expenditure side of L249,000), and examine the heads of tax revenue shown in the upper half of the column.  It will be seen that 70-75 per cent. of Irish “true” revenue is derived from Customs and Excise duties, which, with the exception perhaps of licence duties, may be classed as indirect taxation.  The deduction for “true” revenue, it will be observed, has considerably modified the proportion, which for “collected” revenue works out at 77.61 per cent., or nearly four-fifths.

As the reader is aware, this is not a new feature in Irish finance.  It formed the basis of the Report of the Financial Relations Commission with regard to the over-taxation of Ireland.  Much the greater part of Irish revenue, even since the abolition of protective duties and the substitution of direct taxation, has always been derived from taxes on articles of common consumption, the simple reason being that Ireland is a country where there is little accumulated wealth from which to extract direct taxation.  In Great Britain, whose circumstances dictate the finance of the United Kingdom, no less than 54.79 per cent. of the tax revenue is derived from direct taxation, only 45.21 per cent. from Customs and Excise.[135]

The Irish figures show that to retain in the hands of the Imperial Parliament the control of Irish Customs and Excise will be to retain almost paramount control over Irish revenue; to deny Ireland the main lever she needs for co-ordinating her expenditure and her revenue, and for making her taxation suitable to her economic conditions.  It will be to preserve the framework of a fiscal system which the highest financial authorities have pronounced to be unfair to Ireland, and which incontrovertible facts show to be uneconomical both for Ireland and Great Britain.