Ireland was thereby swindled out of the protection she would have derived from a just revision of the proportions.

"Had that amalgamation not taken place," says Sir Stafford," and had the system of raising revenue which prevailed from 1801 to 1816 been continued, the Irish separate debt would have continued to increase until the country might have been crushed by it” (p. viii.)

Again Sir Stafford ignores the provision for revising the proportions in 1820. One would think he had not seen it; and yet he copies at full length the section of the Act that contains it.

The following admissions are worth extracting: "Since 1845," says Sir Stafford, "the share which Great Britain has had in the remission of imperial taxation has been proportionally much larger than that which Ireland has had; and the additions made to the imperial taxation of Ireland have been proportionally heavier than those made to the taxation of Great Britain, while at the same time it can hardly be doubted that Great Britain has derived a larger measure of advantage than Ireland from the repeal of the Corn Laws, as a compensation for which the boon was originally given by Sir R. Peel.

"It is not surprising that the large increase which your committee have noticed in the general taxation since 1845, should have given rise to complaint. Nor is it surprising that louder complaints should have been made by Ireland than by other parts of the United Kingdom. The pressure of taxation will be felt most by the weakest part of the community; and as the average wealth of the Irish taxpayers is less than the average wealth of the English taxpayers, the ability of Ireland to bear heavy taxation is evidently less than the ability of England. Mr. Senior, whose evidence upon the position of Ireland will be found very suggestive, remarks that the taxation of England is both the heaviest and the lightest in Europe the heaviest as regards the amount raised, the lightest as regards the ability to bear that amount; but that in the case of Ireland it is heavy both as regards the amount and as regards the ability of the contributor; and he adds that England is the most lightly taxed, and Ireland the most heavily taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally liable to equal taxation" (pp. x. xi.)

But Sir Stafford says that if Irish taxation were specially reduced on the score of Irish poverty, the poorer parts of Great Britain might claim reduction of taxes on similar grounds. On the first publication in the newspapers of Sir Stafford's Report, I addressed to the National League a letter, from which I take the following passage: "When Colonel Dunne claims that, in conformity with Union promises, Irish fiscal burthens should be lessened to the admittedly small ratio of Irish fiscal ability, he is told that the same claim of reduction might as fairly be set up by any distressed portion of Great Britain-say, for instance, Wiltshire. And this shallow excuse is given by able men! Pray, look at the disparity that exists between the cases they thus seek to assimilate. Wiltshire never had a distinct and separate debt. Wiltshire cannot show, as Ireland can, that it was ever promised exemption from the old British debt. It cannot show, as Ireland can, that it was ever promised the local and exclusive expenditure of its own surplus public revenue. In these important respects it stands in a totally different position from Ireland. On the direct contrary, Wiltshire is morally, politically, and geographically an integral member of that country which promised to secure to Ireland exemption from pre-Union British burthens, and the exclusive use of

Irish surplus revenue. It is, therefore, absurd to pretend that Wiltshire has as good a right-or any right-to make for herself claims such as we put forward. Wiltshire, being an integral part of Britain, is herself a party to the British promise given to Ireland. She stands in the position of promiser-Ireland occupies that of promisee. It is a shallow and discreditable juggle to pretend that an identity of position exists between parties who stand in directly opposite relations to each other."

I conclude this section of the Appendix with the following quotation from a speech delivered by Henry Grattan in 1800: "Rely on it that Ireland, like every enslaved country, will ultimately be compelled to pay for her own subjugation. Robbery and taxes ever follow conquest; the country that loses her liberty loses her revenues.'

"RIGBY."

I AM not certain that Downpatrick was the scene of this gentleman's curious adventure as a parliamentary candidate. Perhaps it was Athlone. (See page 56.)

THE REGENCY QUESTION.

AMONG the difficulties most commonly paraded by those persons who can see nothing but mischief in the Repeal of the Union, one of the most prominent is the possible difference of the two parliaments on the question of selecting a Regent. Mr. Sharman Crawford, in his anti-Repeal Letters of 1841, copying his predecessors, insisted strongly on the perils (and no man denies them) which would follow from such a diversity. The Repealers, however, propose that the cause of dissension on this point should be extinguished, by leaving the appointment of the Regent exclusively in the hands of the British ministry and parliament. To this proposal Mr. Crawford objected, "That it would surrender the independence of the Irish parliament on this vital point."

I quote the following passage from my reply to Mr. Crawford: "I do not see how the independence of the Irish parliament would be one whit more compromised by an ipso facto identity of the Regent, than it would be by the ipso facto identity of the Sovereign; and, I never yet heard that this latter identity was deemed incompatible with the parliamentary independence of Ireland. In fact, the identity of the Regent would seem to follow as a necessary consequence from the principle of the law that requires the identity of the monarch.

"Mr. Crawford terms the Regency question 'a vital point.' So it isvital to the imperial connexion of the kingdoms; and it is therefore that we Repealers, being ardent friends of the connexion, are desirous to incorporate with the Irish Constitution a provision for the identity of the Regent. But the question of the Regent's person, however important to the connexion of the countries, is a matter of very inferior importance as affects the general welfare and every-day comfort of the people—the administration of justice-the prosperity of trade, of manufactures, of commerce. These are the matters of really vital importance to the people

matters which require all the care of a resident, well-constructed, popular parliament. Give the people of Ireland such a parliament as this, and they can well afford to leave to a British ministry the selection of the Regent's person."

JOHN O'CONNELL ON THE COMPARATIVE COM

FORT OF THE IRISH PEOPLE, BEFORE AND
AFTER THE UNION.*

JOHN O'CONNELL, to show the greater comfort enjoyed by the Irish people before the Union than in 1843, wrote as follows: "A return has recently appeared in all the papers, of the number of sheep and horned cattle at Ballinasloe every year since 1790 to the present time. I extract from it the following:

Now, by a parliamentary report of 1834, and the Irish Railway Report, I find that our whole export of sheep the first of the above years was only 800-and in the second was 125,000. What became of the 77,100 surplus sheep in the former year, as well as the sheep at other fairs? They were eaten at home. Where did the people get money to buy them? The money of the country was spent in the country. As to oxen, 14,000 went away in 1799, and 98,000 in 1835; yet, if we test the product of all Ireland in the former year by the amount at Ballinasloe fair-no bad criterion, I believe-she had for sale more in that year than in 1835, and consumed, the surplus over her export. Her

export in 1799 was only one-seventh of what it was in 1835."

ENDOWMENT OF THE IRISH CATHOLIC CHURCH. SINCE the seventh chapter of this work was written, Mr, Aubrey De Vere has published his pamphlet entitled "Pleas for Secularization;" in which he again assigns reasons for dissenting from my opinion that the state-endowment of the Catholic Church of Ireland would be eminently pernicious to the spiritual and temporal interests of the Irish people. Mr. De Vere's views, and mine, have been so fully stated in our various publications, hat farther discussion of our respective reasons would, I think, be superfluous; the more especially as the policy I venture to advocate has received the high and unanimous sanction of the Catholic Prelates of Ireland at their general meeting held in Dublin on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd October, 1867.

* See page 172.

JUDGE O'HAGAN ON THE SEPARATE IRISH JUDICATURE.*

"We may labour, in all proper cases, to assimilate the laws of the three kingdoms, giving for that purpose from every district what light and help we can reciprocally furnish; but we should maintain for all the integrity of their independent judicatures, in the assurance that they will not less enjoy the benefits of a common code, if it do not aim to subordinate any one to any other of them, or unduly exalt a part at the expense of exhaustion and depression to the rest. For Ireland, at least, it is essential to maintain a high judiciary and an educated bar, if she would preserve anything of the informed opinion, the productive energy, and the public spirit, without which a people stagnates and sinks into contempt." (See p. 200 ante.)

• From his Address, at the Social Science Congress at Belfast, September, 1867.

THE END.

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