On Tuesday was issued a Parliamentary paper, in the form
of a letter to the Treasury from the Inland Revenue Board, explaining an error which had been made in computing Ire- land's contribution to the spirit duty. The result is that Mr. Gladstone overstated the Irish contribution by £364,649. The error was "largely due to the negligence of a single officer" in one of the Belfast districts. In this way, " the quantity of duty-paid spirits exported in 1891.92 had been greatly understated." The error, of course, seriously interferes with Mr. Gladstone's prediction that the Irish Parliament will suffer from " a plethora of money,"—a somewhat sensational description, in any ease, of a surplus of £500,000. Mr. Gladstone, however, does not appear in the least discouraged, and said in the House on Tuesday that the total of the supposed Irish revenue would be reduced " by an amount materially smaller " than the admitted error. That is an oracular statement with which, for the present, we must be content.
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