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11
“The pressure of taxation,” says the report, “will be felt most by the weakest part
of the community; and, as the average wealth of the Irish tax-payers is less than the
average wealth ‘of the linglish tax-payers, the ability of Ireland to bear heavy taxation
is evidently less than the ability of England. Mr. Senior, whose evidence on the
position of Ireland .will be found very suggestive, remarks that the taxation of England
is both theheaviest and the lightest; in Europe-the heaviest as regards thcamount raised,
the lightest as regards the abilityto bear that amount; but, 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.” (Report of Committee, page 11.)
This monstrous state of things had its origin in the ingenious
device of forcing upon Ireland at the Union a rate of contribution
beyond her ability to meet. She, of course, broke down beneath
the unjust load--a load which was admitted to be an overcharge
by a’ host of statesmen and a parliamentary committee in 1815.
Yet, mark! that avowed overcharge has been argued on and
treated as if it had created a just and equitable liability on the
part of Ireland, and as if its removal by the Consolidation Act of
1816-the removal, mind you, of a load which admittedly ought
never to have been imposed--entitled Great Britain, by way of
set-off, to deprive Ireland of the periodical revision of her quota,
promised by the Act of Union; to withhold from her the enjoy-
ment of her own special surplus revenue, also promised by that
Act; and to bring her under a system of indiscriminate taxation
with Great Britain, whereby she is made to contribute to the pre-
Union British debt-charge, as well as all other British burthens,
without any regard to her relative capacity.
But my purpose just now is not so much to call your notice to
the mode in which we have been entangled in the ‘meshes of
British taxation, as to the actual magnitude and operation of
the grievance.
The animal drains thus effected are immense. The amount of
Irish revenue expended out of Ireland in 1861 is calculated by the
Special Committee, appointed by the Dublin Corporation to ex-
amine the subject, to have been $3,970,715. A similar calculation
for 1860 shows the exported Irish revenue for that year to have
been &l,O95,453.
The Imperial theory is the opiatcwhercby the British financier
soothes his conscience for these enormous and destructive abstrac-
tions. Aceording to that theory, Ireland has no special rights.
England, under the convenient designation of the “Empire,” is
fully entitled to help herself to any extent from Irish resources,
and to refund---nothing. ,