Annuities and Tariffs The annuities due from the Irish Free
State to this country amount to 15,000,000 a year. Mr. Thomas announced in the House of Commons on Tuesday that the yield of the special duties on Free State imports had amounted in fifteen weeks to £674,000. On that basis less than £2,500,000 would be netted in the full year, though Mr. Thomas added that the rate had been increasing in the last month or so. Now the duties are to be heavily increased in the hope that the /5,000,000 may be got into the British Treasury in that way. It pretty certainly will not be. for the new duties are almost prohibitive, which means that the cattle (for example) on which they would hare been levied simply will not come in at all. Irish farmers will, no doubt, be ruined and Mr. de Valera will have to settle with them both financially (as he is doing by a subsidy which does not cover half their loss) and politically. Mr.- Thomas on Wednesday held out the promise of easy terms to the Irish President if he would first admit legal liability, but there is not the faintest prospect of his doing that.
• * *
Previous page
