[To THE EDITOR OP TER " SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—I believe your
contention that Ireland is not overtaxed because individual Irishmen pay the same taxes as individual Englishmen is a delusion and a snare. One instance is enough to destroy your argument. The Irish labourer gets one shilling a day wages and his diet, and has to provide tea, sugar, &c., for his wife and family out of this shilling, and also tobacco and, perhaps, beer for himself. On all these things he pays the same duty as his English equivalent, whose wages are so much higher. You cannot deny that the Irish- man with his miserable wage is overtaxed as compared to his more fortunate fellow in England.—I am, Sir, &c.,
JOHN E. B. LOFTUS. Windham Club, St. James's Square, S.W.
[Every poor man in the position described is overtaxed, but such poor men are not the monopoly of Ireland. There are thousands of them in England and Scotland, and in the aggregate they outnumber the poor Irish. Yet they are to be further taxed in order to square the financial circle of the Government's Home Rule Bill.—En. Spectator.]
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