On Friday week, Mr. Chamberlain introduced the general debate on
the financial clauses in a very powerful speech, in which he argued that in his three entirely separate financial proposals for Irish Home-rule, Mr. Gladstone had adhered to but one principle, if principle it could be called, and that was to find a surplus of half-a-million for Ireland at the first start by hook or by crook. In 1886, he held that " taxable capacity " was the true criterion of what each section of the United Kingdom should pay to the common fund. And he then measured taxable capacity by the amount of property assessed to the death-duties, and deduced that the taxable capacity of Ireland was one-fourteenth of that of the whole United King- dom. But instead of proposing that Ireland should contribute one-fourteenth or one-fifteenth of the whole, he introduced a perfectly irrelevant discussion of the difference between duties collected in one country but paid on goods consumed in the other, which he made the excuse for reducing the Irish contri- bution from one-fifteenth to one-twenty-fifth, and thus brought out a surplus of half-a-million for Ireland. In February of this year, he took the product of a particular tax as repre- senting what Ireland should pay, and this made the Irish contribution one-twenty-sixth of the whole, but then he pro- posed an arbitrary gift to Ireland of half-a-million towards the expense of the constabulary, which changed the initial contri- bution from one-twentysixth to one-thirtieth. Then he changed his mind again, and in the scheme now before the Committee proposed to take the contribution actually paid at the present time, as the best practical guide, and this he stated at one-third of the Irish revenue, which, he says, makes one-twenty-seventh or one-twenty-eighth of the whole Imperial contribution to com- mon expenditure ; but as that does not give the half-million sur- plus, he deducts the cost of collection and one-third of the cost of the constabulary, and so reduces Ireland's contribution from one-twenty-eighth of the whole to one-fortieth. If a similarly beneficent arrangement could be made for Great Britain, we should have an initial surplus of £7,000,000.
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