GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND [MONEY].

HC Deb 20 May 1914 vol 62 cc1970-2051

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

"That it is expedient, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session, to amend the provisions for the Government of Ireland,—

To authorise the payment in each year out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom into the Irish Exchequer, or to any body or person in the stead of the Irish Exchequer,—

1. (a) of a fixed sum based on the cost, at the time of the passing of the said Act, of the branches of Government to be administered thereunder by the Irish Government, and, in the case of the future transfer of any other branches of Government to the Irish Government, of further sums based on the savings to the Exchequer o£ the United Kingdom resulting from the transfer; the amount of the said fixed sum and any such further sums to be determined in manner provided by the said Act, with power to make payments on account of those sums pending that determination; and
2. (b) of a sum of five hundred thousand pounds, diminishing in each year after the third year of payment by the sum of fifty thousand pounds until it is reduced to the sum of two hundred thousand pounds; and
3. (c) of sums equal to the proceeds of any taxes imposed by the Irish Parliament in pursuance to the powers given by the said Act, the amount of those proceeds to be determined in manner provided by the said Act:

And to authorise such Customs Duties to be charged on articles brought into Great Britain from Ireland, or into Ireland from Great Britain., and such alterations of drawbacks or allowances to be made in respect of those articles as may be provided for by the said Act in cases where any Customs or Excise Duty levied in Great Britain is levied at a different rate from that at which the duty is levied in Ireland, or where any Customs or Excise Duty is levied in Great Britain and not levied in Ireland, or levied in Ireland and not levied in Great Britain:

And to authorise the payment out of the Consolidated Fund, or out of moneys provided by Parliament, of any salaries, pensions, superannuation allowances, gratuities, or compensation, for the payment of which to or on behalf of any judges or Irish officers, or officers or constables of the Royal Irish Constabulary or of the Dublin Metropolitan Police Force, provision may be made in pursuance of the said Act; and also of any sums for the payment of which out of the Consolidated Fund, or out of moneys provided by Parliament, provision, may be made by the said Act in the event of the failure of the Irish Government to make any such payment.—[Mr. Birrell.]

The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Herbert Samuel)

The Committee will not expect, and will still less desire, me to go over again the familiar paths which we trod during the many weary days when we discussed the financial provisions of the Home Rule Bill in the first year that it was before the House. But it will probably be desirable and for the convenience of the Committee that I should make a brief statement as to the changes in the financial relations between the Imperial and the Irish Exchequers which are resulting since that time owing to two causes—first, the lapse of time and the changes that have followed in its train, and, secondly, the proposals of my right hon. Friend in his Budget for this year. In the first place, I think it would be for the convenience of the Committee if I were at the outset to trouble them with a few figures showing as precisely and as clearly as I can what the Irish revenue and expenditure have been, are, and will be, under the conditions with which we have had to deal in the past and will have to deal in the future. In the financial year in which the Home Rule Bill was introduced, 1912–13, the total true revenue from Ireland was £10,600,000, and the total expenditure on Irish account contemplated by the Home Rule Bill was £12,600,000. That includes the expenditure on all the services proposed to be transferred to the Irish Government. It includes also the expenditure for Irish purposes on all the services reserved to the Imperial Government—such as insurance, old age pensions, police, and so forth—and it includes the sum of £500,000 which the Bill proposes to allot to Ire- land as a margin or surplus, a sum which the Committee will remember was to remain at that figure for three years and then to be gradually reduced until, at the end of eight years, it had been lowered to a sum of £200,000. In the year 1912–13 the total true revenue was, as I have said, £10,600,000, the expenditure £12,600,000, and the deficit £2,000,000, of which the Committee will remember £1,500,000 was wholly independent of the Home Rule Bill, and was in no sense caused by the Home Rule Bill, which was not a matter of accounting under the Bill. It was the existing deficit on Irish account with or without Home Rule, the additional £500,000 being the further sum allotted by the Home Rule Bill itself.

Mr. LOUGH

Is that the normal deficit?

4.0 P.M.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Including the surplus, the deficit was £2,000,000. In the year 1913–14 the Irish revenue had somewhat improved, and the expenditure had also slightly increased. The total revenue was £11,000,000, and the total expenditure was £12,800,000, again including the surplus of £500,000. And the deficit in that year would be £1,800,000. This year, apart from Budget changes or any question of new taxation or additional Grants, the revenue would be still £11,000,000, and the total expenditure under the Home Rule Bill would be £13,300,000. The expenditure would be somewhat increased, and the deficit would be £2,300,000.

Mr. CASSEL

Can the right hon. Gentleman give separate figures for the Irish services?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

I could do so, but it rather complicates it. I will find them in the course of the Debate, and send them to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. CASSEL

These figures are all estimates?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The figures of 1912–13 and 1913–14 are ascertained figures after the close of the financial year. The figures for 1914–15 are necessarily an estimate.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us to what expenditure the additional deficit of £500,000 in 1914–15 over 1913–14 is to be attributed?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The cost of the Reserved Services were as follows;—1912–13, £5,380,000, and 1913–14, £5,490,000. For 1914–15, with the Budget changes, the estimate is £5,890,000. The cost of the Transferred Services in 1912–13 was £6,750,000; in 1913–14 it was £6,870,000; and in 1914–15, with the Budget changes, it is estimated at £7,250,000. To those figures have to be added in each case the surplus of £500,000, and there are quite small changes in the Post Office revenue which are not included in the Reserved or Transferred Services.

Mr. JAMES HOPE

Does the last figure take account of the Budget changes?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The figure which I quoted, £13,300,000, does not.

Mr. CASSEL

The right hon. Gentleman gave it as including the Budget changes.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

No, I will come to that now. The figure is practically unaltered. With respect to changes effected by the Budget—first with regard to revenue. Revenue from Ireland will be increased under three heads—Income Tax, Super-tax, and Estate Duty. In the first year, 1914–15, only a part of the increase will be realised. The Income Tax from Ireland, it is estimated, will be increased by £164,000, the Supertax by £75,000, and the Estate Duties by £20,000. That is a total increase of revenue of £259,000 from Ireland in the present financial year. In the following year, 1915–16, it is estimated that the Income Tax in Ireland will bring in an additional £185,000, the Super-tax £175,000, and the Estate Duties £75,000, or a total of £435,000.

Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN

Does that mean that the taxation of Ireland will be increased next year by £435,000?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

That is so; but from that must be deducted a small sum of £35,000, arrears of Super-tax, which it is expected will be gathered in in that year. But, other things being equal, subsequent years would show an increased revenue of £400,000, because the figures for 1915–16 would include £35,000 for Super-tax collected, which does not properly belong to that financial year.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

Is the increase which the right hon. Gentleman mentions an increase arising from this year's Budget alone, or does it take into account the natural increase that will arise?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

It is an increase due to the new Budget, and is the Treasury Estimate of the measure of the financial changes which would result from the new Budget taxes. On the other side of the account—and I am sure that hon. Members from Cork will be as much, interested in that as in the revenue side—the new Grants to Ireland as estimated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be-nine-eightieths of the Grants of the new services for education, and nine-eightieths of other Grants except police, and the sums will be as follows: I take first the present financial year, when a specified portion of these Grants will of course be received in Ireland as in Great Britain. For education there will be no additional Grant this year. But for the services, other than education, for which additional Grants are made in relief of the rates, the Grants will amount to £172,000. The proportion of the additional sum devoted to increasing the pay of Post Office servants who are in receipt of low rates of wages is estimated—but this is quite a conjectural estimate—at £3,000. The proportion of the Grants for tuberculosis, nursing, and laboratories, all of which will be Transferred Services, will be £22,500. For insurance, which is a Reserved Service, the amount is £52,000, and there will be cost of collection of Duties, which is a Reserved Service, of from £1,000 to £1,500. This would make a total of £251,000 this year. So that the present financial year will show, if the Estimates are realised, an increased revenue from Ireland of £259,000, and an increased expenditure in Ireland of £251,000. Then in a full, year—I have already given the figure of revenue, which will amount to £400,000—the Grants will be: Education, £112,500; other services, £517,000; Post Office wages, £3,000; nursing, tuberculosis, and labroratories, £67,500; insurance, £65,000; collection of Duties—an Estimate which must be-somewhat conjectural—£1,500; which gives a total of £767,000. So that the effect of adding those sums to the two-sides of the account will be as follows: Let me remind the Committee that, apart from the Budget changes, the revenue this year would be £11,050,000, and the expenditure £13,390,000, or a deficit of £2,340,000, including the surplus. After the Budget changes for the financial year 1914–15, the revenue will be £11,310,000 and the expenditure £13,640,000, or a deficit of £2,330,000—that is to say, the deficit will be practically unaltered. But in 1915–16—I am not taking into account any changes that may come from growth of population or normal growth of expenditure, but am merely making the addition due to the Budget changes and leaving everything else unaltered, and apart from the £35,000 arrears of Super-tax—

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

Does the right hon. Gentleman allow anything for increase?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

No, I am simply taking the figures and applying a full year's charge of the Budget of this year. The total revenue would be £11,450,000 and the total expenditure would be £14,150,000, which would leave a deficit of £2,700,000. That last figure would, under the provisions of the Home Rule Bill, be reduced in a period of eight years by about £300,000.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

One question in regard to the new Grants to Ireland: Are they to be subject to the same conditions as those which are made in England? A large portion of the English Grants are dependent on the authorities speeding up or improving the local services. Will those conditions apply to Ireland?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

No. That will be left to the Irish Parliament, to whom they will be handed over. They are being paid over to a legislative body, which is the proper body to exercise control so far as control is needed over the local governing bodies within its area.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Is the local Parliament obliged to spend it on the same purposes or not?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

No; it will be left to its own discretion.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Is it not obliged to make any valuation in order to get it?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

No, the local Parliament is not obliged to make any valuation. These are really matters of domestic regulation. If you are to establish at all the principles of self-government in a country such as Ireland, surely these are matters which should be properly within the competence of the subordinate Parliament of that country.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Does that not depend upon whose money it is?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The greater part of these Grants is Irish money.

Sir GEORGE YOUNGER

No.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Yes, it is.

Sir GEORGE YOUNGER

Is not there a difference to the bad of £360,000 a year?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Yes, there is that, but the greater part of the Grant is Irish money drawn from Ireland, which is being returned to the control of the Irish Parliament for Irish purposes.

Sir EDWARD CARSON

Has any separate calculation been made as to how much goes in relief of local purposes to Ulster?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

I shall come to that later, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will tell me what he means by Ulster?

Sir E. CARSON

By Ulster I mean Ulster.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

No calculation has been made in respect of this.

Sir E. CARSON

Why?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

For reasons, which I will give subsequently, in our view it is not necessary to attempt to make a separate calculation of revenue and expenditure in respect of particular parts of Ireland.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

Does the right hon. Gentleman say that there will be a deficit of £2,233,000 this year?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

In the year 1914–15.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

And how much next year?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

It includes the whole of the expenditure from the date of the Home Rule Bill. Everything of every kind is included. This, of course, is not the occasion on which the Committee can enter into the Budget proposals themselves, or as to the propriety of particular Grants proposed to be made to Ireland. They are not dealt with in this Resolution. This Resolution, on which the financial portions of the Home Rule Bill are founded, does not touch the distribution of the Grants under the Finance Bill of this year. That is an entirely separate matter, and I have only given the figures in order that the Committee may have before them as clearly as I am able to present it the whole financial case with which Parliament is now dealing. Therefore, it would be improper for me to debate in any way the character of the Grants which my right hon. Friend proposes that Parliament should vote under the financial proposals of this year. They will be embodied, not in the Home Rule Bill, but in the Finance Bill, and the occasion for debating those Grants will come when the Finance Bill is before the House. But hon. Members opposite will no doubt say, in relation to the Home Rule Bill itself, "How is it that you ask Parliament to establish a system of Home Rule partly for the reason that the outgoings from the British Treasury would be to a great extent reduced, and nevertheless we now find that the outgoings are about to be increased in your financial proposals of this year." Was it not the case, they may ask very fairly, that I myself when "peaking in this House On previous occasions upon the financial portions of the Home Rule Bill suggested that Irish accounts, so far as the Transferred Services were concerned, were to be stereotyped at a fixed sum to be embodied in the Transferred Sum, and now we propose an increase of the Transferred Sum above the amount set out in the Home Rule Bill.

It was always intended that any fresh revenue derived from the normal growth of Ireland's population or prosperity, should go to the British Exchequer and should gradually go to meet deficits which existed previously to Home Rule, and which still existed after Home Rule—that all such normal increases of revenue, whatever they might be, should gradually fill up the deficits until the the two sides of the account should balance, and that Ireland should no longer be subsidised from the Imperial Exchequer. It was never contemplated that the Imperial Parliament should levy in Ireland additional taxation for purely British purposes. Necessarily this Parliament must retain the power to increase the taxation of Ireland for Imperial purposes, since the United Kingdom Parliament must be the supreme legislative and fiscal authority for all parts of these islands. Therefore there was never any question of destroying the power of this House to levy additional taxation, if occasion required, in Ireland as in Great Britain; but it was never contemplated that the power should be used to raise additional taxation in Ireland for purposes from which Ireland herself was excluded, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer put this matter very clearly in the course of the Debates on the Clauses of the Bill in Committee. On the 2nd of December, 1912, in the course of a speech my right hon. Friend made-on that occasion, there is a passage which is pertinent to the present situation, and I must ask the Committee to allow me to read it. My right hon. Friend said:— Let us take, first of all, an instance of a fresh burden to be imposed. I will take the case put by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire. Let us assume there is a naval crisis, and it is necessary to raise an additional sum by means of taxation. That burden will be borne by the United Kingdom. What will be the position of the Imperial Chancellor of the Exchequer then? The position would be this: He would levy a tax which would extend over the whole of the United Kingdom to meet an absolutely new emergency. Let us suppose he puts an additional twopence on the Income Tax to meet a great naval crisis. Not only would he be in a position, after the appointed day, to make that charge over the whole of the United Kingdom, but I think it would be his obvious duty to do so. It would be a charge that ought to be borne by the whole of the United Kingdom. That is my view with regard to that question. I do not think there will be any difference so far as the general Imperial burden or obligation is concerned after the passing of the Home Rule Bill from the position which obtains at the present time.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

That is the present charge for Imperial purposes?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Yes, for Imperial purposes. My right hon. Friend went on to say this:— If it was a charge with respect to some burden for the benefit of Great Britain alone, some charge, for instance, for a social scheme which was purely for the benefit of England, Scotland and Wales, then I should consider it a distinct broach of faith to put a charge on Ireland for something in the benefit of which she did not participate, unless there was some Grant to Ireland equivalent to the benefit conferred upon Great Britain. That was the answer of the right hon. Gentleman. There were statements to a similar effect by other Members of the Government, and I think I myself in the course of those Debates made the statement that it would be regarded as inconsistent with anything in the scheme of the Home Rule Bill for Parliament to exercise the power—which is necessarily and properly retained to levy new taxation in Ireland—to levy those taxes uniformly over the United Kingdom for purposes in which Great Britain, as distinct from Ireland, specifically benefited, and that if the purposes were of that character and so intended, then a corresponding benefit ought to be given to Ireland.

Sir EDWARD CARSON

Will this power remain under the Home Rule Bill when it comes into force, and the Irish Members are reduced here?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Of course it will. If has never been suggested by anyone in' this House, at any stage, that Parliament should not impose any taxes in Ireland, but if that power were to be exercised arbitrarily in the manner my right hon. Friend condemns, of course it would be within the competence of Parliament, in a single year, to levy £2,000,000 of taxation specially from Ireland, and' thereby, at a stroke, pay off the whole of the Irish deficit.' That would be within its competence, but obviously it would be a great injustice to do so, nor was it ever contemplated that additional taxation should be imposed on Ireland and used for expenditure in Great Britain. Parliament will judge according to the equities of each case, after the passing of Home Rule, as before the passing of Home Rule, and that is the course we ask the House of Commons this year to adopt.

Mr. BONAR LAW

For weeks while the Home Rule Bill was going through I tried to get from the Chancellor of the Exchequer how this would work. The right hon. Gentleman has now made it clear. As I understand it, after Home Rule, this House, whenever there is any English or Scottish social reform to be carried through, will levy taxation on the whole of Ireland, and impose that taxation, even though they do not wish it, and hand over money which they may not require.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

I must have made myself particularly obscure if the right hon. Gentleman draws that conclusion. It will not be at all necessary for the Imperial Parliament to levy taxes over the whole of the United Kingdom. It might levy taxes, if it so desired, specifically upon Great Britain, payable only in Great Britain, and so provide money for purely British purposes. But if it did prefer to levy taxation in Ireland for any British purpose, still obviously it would be right and proper—I cannot understand anybody taking any other view—that it should return to Ireland, at all events, a proportion of the money so raised. Let me remind the right hon. Gentleman that in any case the taxes in Ireland would be collected by the Imperial authorities; it would not be a case of forcing the Irish Parliament to levy taxation and to receive money which it did not wish to have.

Mr. BONAR LAW

That does not make it any clearer. If, for instance, Income Tax is levied for the whole of the Kingdom for some purpose in England and Scotland alone,- that means that Ireland is to pay her share of the fund though she may not want the revenue, and might want to reduce taxation.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

That is what I said. Certainly the supreme control in matters of taxation remains in this House, and such has always been the intention. Hon. Members opposite may say that if we claim that this Bill introduces the principle of federalism in our Constitution, that such a principle would require complete separation of the finance of Ireland, on the one hand, from the finance of the United Kingdom, taken as a whole, on the other. But I would venture to submit that is not so. If the financial arrangements under Federal Constitutions are studied, you will find that very rarely indeed is there any complete separation of finance between the local or State Parliament, and the central or national Parliament. In the United States, indeed, there is practically a complete separation of that character; but in Canada, Australia, Germany, and in other Federations, you find that there is a considerable amount of accounting between the central Exchequer and the local exchequers. Contributions are paid by the central body to local bodies or by the local bodies to the central body, and it is rarely found that in any federation you get a clear cut line between the finance of the local authorities and of the central authority. In any case where there is a clear cut line between the taxes levied by the central and local authorities, you still find that the central Parliament and the local Parliaments both levy taxes of some kind in the same areas. That is one of the necessary marks of federalism. It may almost be taken to be the very essence of a federal Constitution that you should have two governing and fiscal authorities in the same area—the national authority, dealing with all the purposes of the whole body of the nation, and the State or provincial authorities, dealing with the local purposes which are peculiar to their particular areas. With respect to this additional sum, which under the Grants of this year will be receivable by the Irish Parliament, one of the chief complaints which we had to meet in previous Debates on the Home Rule Bill was that Ireland was starved for money. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University urged that again and again, and said that the Irish Parliament would find itself inadequately equipped to meet, the charges which would fall upon it. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford on more than one occasion said that, although he approved the financial provisions of the Bill, he, for his part, representing the party of which he is chief, would greatly have preferred that a larger sum should have been placed at the disposal of the Irish Parliament—not an unnatural desire—and the same view was expressed by the hon. Member for North Dublin, who has taken so keen an interest in this matter. Hon. Members for Cork urged the same thing, and said that the Irish Parliament would be confined within too rigid fiscal bounds, and would be unable to carry out all the necessary work of development and improvement in Ireland. Outside this House the same appeal was made by Lord MacDonnell on many occasions, and representations were made that the work of the Irish Parliament; would be hampered unless further money was placed at their disposal. All those representations were quoted with approval by hon. Members opposite. Again and again they brought to their aid the arguments of hon. Members from Cork, of Lord MacDonnell, of the Irish Education Board, and other authorities, who were complaining that the Government had not placed adequate resources at the disposal of the Irish Parliament. And indeed it was said, if you are going to grant Home Rule at all, do it generously, so that the Irish Parliament is started on its career, at all events, not with its hands too tightly tied in matters of finance. These additional Grants, which will be at the disposal of that Parliament, and which are somewhat larger than the sums which will be raised from Ireland in additional taxation, those additional sums at the disposal of the Irish Parliament will greatly facilitate the work of Irish Government, certainly at the outset of the career of the Home Rule Parliament.

Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN

As I understand, as far as the Budget is concerned, there will be no relief at all to Ireland in reference to the, present condition of local taxation accounts. Is that so?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

No, very much the opposite is the case.

Mr. W. O'BRIEN

I should like to have that made clear.

Mr. HERBERTSAMUEL

I endeavoured to make it clear. The figures which I gave clearly show that in the present financial year Ireland will receive for other Services, and these are mainly Grants in aid of the local taxation account, an additional £172,000 above the sums which are now being received, and, further, she will receive for tuberculosis and other Irish purposes in Ireland a sum which will make the total, with the £172,000, a sum of £251,000, that is in the present incomplete year, against which she will pay additional taxation of £259,000.?

Mr. W. O'BRIEN

Do those other services mean that, for instance, the Grants to district lunatic asylums in Ireland will be increased in the local taxation account?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

I should not like to pin myself to any particular Grant, but generally the sum will go to increased Grants for roads, for, I think, lunatic asylums and for local purposes generally, as in Great Britain, for the relief of local rates. That sum of £172,000 will be increased next year to £517,000.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

They will not be for any specific purposes.

Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON

What security have we as to that?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

I do not quite follow or comprehend the question. They are Grants equivalent to the Grants, I should have said, which are given in this country for those purposes.

Mr. W. O'BRIEN

Those Grants will depend entirely on the will of the Irish Parliament?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Yes, that is what I have said. I apologise to the hon. Member. I ought to have made it quite clear that I had said that previously.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Will the right hon. Gentleman fill in the gap? That will be the case when the Home Rule Bill has become law and is in force, but what will happen to the money in the meantime, this year's money and next?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

That money will be distributed as an addition to the existing Grants. There will be temporary provision in the Bill. That Hill will also provide for a larger sum in future as an addition to the Transferred Sum payable under any Act of this Parliament for the establishment of an Irish Parliament.

Mr. NEWMAN

Will it be a stereotyped sum?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Yes, that will be stereotyped like all the other Grants payable as part of the Transferred Sum under the Home Rule Bill.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

This is a very complicated matter, but I see the sum is not stated, and does the right hon. Gentleman mean that the Irish sum will bear any relation, after its first calculation, to the sum spent in England, and is it to be fixed on a certain proportion of the sum that is first spent?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

It is to be treated precisely in the same way as all other payments made from the Exchequer to the Irish Parliament—that is to say, it is to be fixed on the basis of the cost of Irish government in the year when the Home Rule Bill is passed. What we propose to be inserted in the Finance Bill is a fixed definite sum of so many hundreds of thousands of pounds which is to be added to the Transferred Sum. That is the amount that has been arrived at on the basis of certain services. If I have not made it quite clear, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will ask me further questions, because I am only anxious to make the matter, which I know, and he knows, is most complicated and technical, as plain to the Committee as it is possible for me to make it.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

I will put a specific question. I think I do understand it. Is it not the case that, having fixed a definite sum under the Home Rule Bill, for which we are passing this Resolution, the right hon. Gentleman proposes to amend the Home Rule Bill by means of the Finance Bill before the Home Rule Bill has become law?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

We are not fixing any definite sum in the Home Rule Bill.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

You are fixing a definite date.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

There is no definite sum fixed in the Home Rule Bill. The Transferred Sum is to be the present cost of Irish government plus the sum of £500,000, reducible subsequently, as I have explained. That provision will remain in the Home Rule Bill as it stands, unaltered. In the Finance Bill there will be a provision to the effect that in that present cost of Irish government is to be included the sum of six hundred odd thousand pounds. That sum has been arrived at in the manner I have suggested. It is equivalent to the increased cost this year of government in England and Scotland and Wales for certain purposes and for certain services, in which Ireland has a part.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Surely the last statement, I think, is not quite accurate. It is the increased cost not this year, but next year.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Yes, I have taken a full year. This year is exceptional.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Therefore, by the Finance Bill you are to make that which is the proportion of the cost of certain services at the passing of the Act mean the cost of certain services a year and a half after the Act has passed.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Not necessarily. The right hon. Gentleman will remember it will be about a year after the passage of the Act before it comes into operation, and I think it would be rather sharp practice to say to Ireland you are just a few months too soon, and we are going to deprive you, although we are going to tax you straight away under the Budget of 1914—we are not going to increase your Grants because your Home Rule Bill is coming into operation a few months too soon. That, I am sure, would be a policy quite unworthy of this House.

Sir E. CARSON

May I ask a question, as this is a very important matter, namely, whether this stereotyped sum, which the right hon. Gentleman says is to be put into-the Finance Bill, will remain exactly as it is no matter how the revenue from Ireland increases under the taxation imposed this year by the Budget?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Yes, Sir, certainly. That is the very essence of the scheme of the Home Rule Bill. As I have endeavoured on very many occasions to explain in this House, I do not know with how much success, the idea is gradually to release Ireland from the position of having her local services paid out of the British taxpayers' pocket, and, consequently, the increases of revenue will be a set-off to the amounts which are to go to that purpose from this House—to be a fixed sum for Irish purposes. Then as to the hon. Member for Cork's objection that we are not imposing in the Finance Bill some condition that these Grants must be allocated to certain particular services after this year, and that they must be dependent upon the efficiency of the local Government, but that these matters are to be left to the discretion of the Irish Parliament. I hope the hon. Member does not so distrust a freely-elected Irish Parliament as to regard them as incompetent adequately to control local government expenditure of that kind.

Mr. W. O'BRIEN

The right hon. Gentleman is ridiculously misrepresenting me. All that I want to know as a matter of information is whether in return for the £430,000 per year additional taxation, which you are imposing upon Ireland—whether or not any immediate additional relief would be given in the local taxation Grants in Ireland in addition to the sum which would be left dependent upon the will of the Irish Parliament?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

As soon as the Irish Parliament comes into being it will have at its disposal this sum, and I have not the smallest doubt it will use the whole amount in the best interests of the Irish people, whether in reduction of rates or for other purposes. When the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Mitchell-Thomson) asks me what security he has, be looks at it from the point of view of an anti-Home Ruler, who does not believe in the principle of self-government being applied to Ireland. We do, and are perfectly contented to entrust the expenditure of this money to the representatives of Ireland.

Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON

If I may say so, that is not precisely the point of my interruption. What I meant to say was this: You are taking away under the Finance Bill—or proposing to take—certain local Grants in relief of local taxation from Ulster. What security have we in Ulster that the money will be replaced to Ulster by an Irish Parliament?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

There again the hon. Member is going on to the question of Ulster, which is a matter fully worthy of separate attention on its own account.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

Before the right hon. Gentleman passes from that, and only for the purpose of getting information, may I ask this question? He has said that these Grants, though calculated on the same basis as in England, will not be earmarked. That is, as I understand him; but he has qualified that by the statement that they will be earmarked for one year. Take, for instance, the Grant to increase the salaries of Post Office servants. There is a small sum of £3,000 to increase the salaries of Post Office servants. As I understand, the right hon. Gentleman has said that in the year immediately before us that will be applied by this Parliament for that purpose. Does he suggest the Irish Parliament should take it away in the following year?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

I have not the smallest doubt that Grants already made for increasing the pay of Irish servants will be continued by the Irish Parliament as a matter of course, and I have no doubt that the Irish Parliament will exercise common sense in their allocation of this money. Let me point out to the hon. Member and to others who have raised this point, that none of the sums which are going to be paid over to the Irish Parliament under the Home Rule Bill will be allocated to particular services at all. They will receive the whole sum of money in a lump—that is, the Transferred Sum—and they, like any other Parliament, will have their revenues at their own disposal.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

Earmarked for one year?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Those sums will be precisely on the same footing as all other sums which the Irish Parliament will have to dispose of. They will not receive year after year, when Home Rule is established, so many hundreds of thousands of pounds for education, and so many hundreds of thousands of pounds for local government purposes, or so many hundreds of thousands of pounds for Grants-in-Aid to local authorities, but they will receive so many million pounds as the Transferred Sum, and the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer will make proposals to his own Parliament for the expenditure of that money in the manner which is best suited to the interests of their constituents.

Hon. Members have raised, not unnaturally, the question of the effect upon Ulster, and what would occur if Ulster is excluded, or any part of Ulster is excluded. It is not our view, as I stated to the right hon. Gentleman, that it is necessary to embark upon any detailed or elaborate calculation as to the amount of revenue actually received and the amount of expenditure actually made in regard to any localities or particular portion of Ireland, if any portion were excluded from the Home Rule Bill. It is obvious that no such calculation could in practice be made. There does not exist the basis on which you can say precisely how much Income Tax, for example, is derived from certain counties in Ulster, or what is the proportion in those counties of any particular head of Irish expenditure. Questions of the greatest complexity and difficulty would arise, and would, indeed, be almost insoluble. There are difficulties enough, which we believe can be overcome, in disentangling the revenue and expenditure of Great Britain and Ireland, but to attempt to disentangle the revenue and expenditure of particular counties in Ireland from those of the rest of Ireland is a task which could not be undertaken. Therefore, as the Prime Minister has stated on previous occasions, a simple arithmetical proportion will have to be adopted on the basis of which these necessary adjustments will be made.

I see that I am going somewhat close to the topics which ought properly to be reserved for any amending Bill brought before Parliament for dealing with the question of Ulster. Warned by that intimation, I shall not tread further along that path. Nor, I fear, would it be possible for me to say anything in respect to the question of Customs in this connection—indeed, that also is more appropriate for treatment when that other Bill comes before this House. With regard to the question of the Irish control over Customs Duties, that is embodied in the Home Rule Bill, and is mentioned specifically in this Resolution. Again, I must urge hon. Members to realise what the proposals in the Home Rule Bill with respect to Customs Duties really are. When I was in Canada last autumn I discussed the question of Home Rule with many people. I found an almost universal consensus of opinion in favour of Home Rule—I am not speaking of the details of this particular Bill—but I found very generally the idea prevalent that we proposed to give control over Irish Customs to the Irish Parliament, and that, they thought, was a proposal open to much objection. They were in many cases astounded to learn—

Mr. T. M. HEALY

On a point of Order. May I ask whether we, who have not seen this amending Bill, are to debate this matter with the right hon. Gentle- man, who knows what the amending Bill will be?

The CHAIRMAN

As I understand, what the right hon. Gentleman was saying at the moment had no reference to the amending Bill.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

Have you seen the amending Bill?

The CHAIRMAN

No.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

Then how can you know whether it has reference to it or not?

The CHAIRMAN

I understood that what the right hon. Gentleman was referring to was those parts of the existing Bill which are authorised or covered by the last paragraph but one of the Resolution now under consideration.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

The right hon. Gentleman was saying that a particular impression existed in Canada respecting the position of Customs under the Home Rule Bill Shall we be in order in this Debate in pointing out that the impression which exists in Canada is exactly the impression which exists in Ireland?

The CHAIRMAN

I think so. This Resolution is the covering authority for the proposals in the Bill now before the House, and any matter arising out of the Clauses which this Resolution wall authorise can, I think, be referred to by any Member.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The hon. and learned Member's interruption was wholly irrelevant. I was not dealing with the question of Ulster or with the question of any amending Bill at all. My remarks had relation solely to the Home Rule Bill as it now stands, and would be relevant to that if no amending Bill had been mentioned or thought of. The impression is prevalent in many quarters that we propose to give to Ireland a control over Customs as complete, say, as that which the Canadians have over their own Customs. Hon. Members who have followed the matter are aware that that is not so; but it is necessary to repeat the fact again and again and again, because the impression evidently is widespread outside that there is to be established Irish control over Irish Customs. The new Irish Parliament will not have power to impose a Customs Duty upon any article on which there is not now or at that time a Customs Duty imposed by this House. The Irish Parliament will have no power to impose a Customs Duty on corn, or any other commodity whatever, except such articles as were already subject to a Customs Duty levied by the Imperial Parliament. The Irish Parliament will have no power—for some reasons I personally regret it, but so the House of Commons have decided—to reduce any Customs Duty on any article imported into Ireland. The sole control for the reduction of Customs wil be vested, as now, in this House. The Irish Parliament will have this power, and this power only, to add to existing Customs an additional percentage, which must not be more than 10 per cent. in any case except in the case of beer and spirits.

Mr. HEWINS

Ten per cent. on the yield?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

That is a minor point. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] It is quite a minor point, whether it is yield or whether it is rate. That is a point which has to be dealt with in legislation, but when discussing the principle it is a matter of trivial importance. The power to impose within their own discretion 10 per cent. extra upon the Customs on tea, sugar, cocoa, tobacco, or any other imported commodities which are exposed to a Customs tariff—that is the power, and the sole power, conferred upon the Irish Parliament under the Home Rule Bill in this connection. If they exercise that power, they are subject to the obligation—it is not left within their option—to impose a corresponding Excise Duty on any similar commodity produced in Ireland, so that it shall not be possible for the additional 10 per cent., or possibly more in the case of beer and spirits, to have any protective effect for the benefit of Irish industries and the disadvantage of British industries.

Mr. JAMES HOPE

Will the Irish Parliament have power to grant export bounties?

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

That is an entirely different question. That is the sole power for dealing with Customs Duties vested in the Irish Parliament. I trust that, both inside this House and outside, it will be understood, when it is suggested that the Irish Parliament are to have control over Irish Customs, as our Colonies and Dominions overseas have control over their local Customs, that the Home Rule Bill proposes nothing of the kind. It pro- poses a very moderate power to make a small addition to Imperial Customs Duties for the benefit of Irish local expenditure. I trust that with the new sources of revenue which will now be placed at the disposal of the Irish Parliament it will not be necessary for them to levy even these small additional imposts. I have detained the Committee much longer than I anticipated, partly because Question Time seems to have been extended into this Debate, and I have been called upon—I do not complain of it in any degree—to answer a considerable number of questions on a subject which is, of necessity, technical and complicated. I must thank the Committee for the patience with which, nevertheless, they have listened to my remarks, and I have now the honour to move the Resolution standing in the name of my right hon. Friend.

5.0 P.M.

Mr. CASSEL

I think that this Debate really affords an occasion for us to protest against the unfair way in which the Government treat the House of Commons. In view of the statement which the right hon. Gentleman has made, would anyone believe that the Government contemplated stifling all discussion on this question, and that it was only due to an accident that we have this opportunity of discussing it I That accident was that the Prime Minister happened to be present when an Amendment was moved to allow an opportunity to discuss this Financial Resolution. I will at all events pay the Prime Minister the qualified and relative tribute that he has more respect than any of his colleagues for the traditions of this House and the rights of the minority. If any of his colleagues, instead of the Prime Minister himself, had been in charge, I am confident that we should have had no opportunity at all of discussing this matter—a question in reference to which the President of the Local Government Board has thought it necessary to make a statement, occupying one hour out of the four and a quarter hours allotted, to show all the changes that have taken place since the matter was last considered. I agree that the right hon. Gentleman was subject to interruption, but on so complicated a matter it is not fair to the House of Commons that we should be allowed only four and a quarter hours for the whole discussion in Committee, while the Report stage is to be taken without any discussion at all. Moreover, we are left to-day without the important Clauses of the Finance Bill, upon which really depends all that the right hon. Gentleman has explained to us. The right hon. Gentleman has endeavoured to give us an explanation of what the provisions of the Finance Bill are; but, accurate though he is, any summary of a Clause is insufficient and unsatisfactory; we ought to have the terms of the Clauses themselves. The right hon. Gentleman revealed this to the House, that in fact, in his view, an additional Grant is being made to Ireland. In respect to that we say—whether it be right or wrong—it is not fair to the House of Commons to deprive Members of all opportunity of discussing whether that Grant ought or ought not to be made.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

An opportunity will come later.

Mr. CASSEL

But we ought to have an opportunity of discussing it before the Home Rule Bill comes up for Third Beading. The truth is we are discussing entirely different financial proposals to those which we were discussing in 1912, and those which we were discussing in 1913. We profess to be proceeding under the Parliament Act, the essence of which is that we should be dealing with the same Bill, but we are dealing in fact and in substance with a different Bill and with entirely different financial proposals. The first difference to which I should like to call the attention of the House is this: that the surplus which is to be given to the Irish Government over and above the cost of the expenditure at the time of the passing of the Act is increased by £700,000. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman can quarrel with that statement.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

What statement?

Mr. CASSEL

I was saying that the surplus which is to be given to the Irish Parliament over and above the net cost of the expenditure at the time of She passing of the Act is increased by £700,000. I think that accurately represents the situation.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Part of that money is for Reserved Services.

Mr. CASSEL

The right hon. Gentleman does not follow my point. My point is that the Irish Parliament is to have £700,000 additional money over and above the £500,000, with which it can do what it likes. As we have not the Finance Bill, I am entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether I correctly represent the situation. My interpretation of the situation is this: that £700,000 additional free money will be given to the Irish Parliament to do with what it likes over and above the £500,000 provided under the original Act. It is, to be strictly accurate, £697,900, but I was putting it in round figures. That means this: That the free surplus is increased at the commencement by 140 per cent., and if you take the diminished surplus, that is, the surplus ultimately diminished, the £200,000, that is increased by 350 per cent. So that you have ultimately the free surplus to the Irish Parliament increased by 350 per cent. A more complete transformation—

Mr. BOOTH

Hear, hear.

Mr. CASSEL

The hon. Gentleman opposite says "Hear, hear." I am now trying to establish the fact—whether it be a good or a bad thing—that the financial proposals of this Bill have been completely transformed, and that we are dealing with an entirely different proposal to those which we were—

Mr. WILLIAM O'BRIEN

The hon. and learned Member forgets that Ireland will have to pay an additional £400,000.

Mr. CASSEL

I am coming to that presently. I am not dealing with the fact that they will have to pay an additional £400,000. I am right in saying that they will have an additional free surplus, to do with whatever they like, of £700,000 over and above the original estimate. With that free surplus they can do whatever they like. They can apply it, if they wish, to reducing the Income Tax in Ireland. There is nothing whatever to prevent them doing that. This is money paid out of the British Treasury, and subscribed by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom as a whole. After the passage of the Bill they may apply the whole of that £700,000 in reducing the Income Tax. The Income Tax works at exactly £1,400,000, so that the £700,000 would be sufficient to allow the Irish Parliament to reduce the Income Tax, if they so chose, by half, at the expense, to a large extent, of the British taxpayer, and the British taxpayer could actually be called upon to pay more money in order that the taxation of the Irish taxpayer might be reduced. That is a monstrous provision; that so large an additional sum should be placed at the disposal of the Irish Parliament without control whatever on the part of the British Treasury, or on the part of the British taxpayer, when the larger part of the money is coming solely out of the pockets of the British taxpayer. So far as the £300,000 is concerned, it is money coming solely out of the pocket of the British taxpayer.

There is a more important point than that. These proposals cannot be carried out without amending the proposals of the Home Rule Bill. That, I think, is quite clear on an interpretation of that Bill, and on this very Financial Resolution, because the Bill provides, in Section 14, what is to be paid into the Irish Exchequer— is a sum to be determined by the Joint Exchequer Board which represents the net cost to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom at the time of the passing of this Act— At the time of the passing of this Act—I would call attention to those words!— of the Irish services and in addition the sum of £500,000. So that what the Joint Exchequer Board have to do under this Bill, if it passes in its present form, is to determine the cost of the Irish services at the time of the passing of the Act. The only date they can look to is the time of the passing of the Act. They can only look to the past. They cannot look to any future Grants which Parliament may intend to make. They will not be able under the provisions of this Bill to give Ireland anything more than the £500,000. You say that you are going to try by the Finance Bill to give an instruction to the Exchequer Board contrary to the provisions of the Home Rule Bill? What is that except amending the Home Rule Bill? I submit, again, that it is unfair that we ought to have to consider financial proposals without having before us, first, the amending Bill—that is, the Finance Bill. Moreover, there is this point to be dealt with: While we are proceeding under the Parliament Act, the Amending Bill will be a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act, so that you are actually trying to amend the Bill which you are trying to pass through under the provisions of the Parliament Act by a Money Bill within the meaning of that Act. I submit, so far as we know the provisions of the Finance Bill at present, and the right hon. Gentleman told us he has given it in substance, it is perfectly plain that the Finance Bill, if it passes at all, will be a Bill to amend the Home Rule Bill.

I pass from that to the question raised by the hon. Gentleman below the Gangway—that is, that Ireland is taxed under the provisions of the Budget to supply additional taxation. That I quite agree with, but their taxation is only estimated to provide £430,000. What possible justification, therefore, is there for giving that free Grant of £700,000—for giving that additional Grant for all time? It means taking £270,000 out of the pocket of the British taxpayer and simply handing it over to the Irish Exchequer, or the Irish Government, to do with what they like, without any sort of control. How this £430,000 is estimated I do not know. That will be one of the insoluble problems which the Joint Exchequer Board will try to make out—to determine what part of the Super-tax is attributable to Ireland. When I asked the right hon. Gentleman some questions upon this matter he gave me answers that showed that so far as he himself was concerned, he did not seem to have the slightest idea how that process was to be accomplished. In addition to that, I would like to point out that the cost of the Reserved Services has increased enormously. These Reserved Services Ireland get the benefit of. Why should not part of that additional taxation more properly go to meet the additional cost of these Reserved Services? As the President of the Local Government Board quoted a passage of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to show that the proceeds of any additional taxation would have to go as an equivalent Grant to Ireland, I might remind him of another quotation from the Chancellor—I think in the same volume—where the right hon. Gentleman said:— Take another alternative. The deficit now is £2,000,000. Supposing new taxation is imposed, and Ireland's share of that new taxation is £500,000, it is true Britain gets £500,000 a year from Ireland she was not getting before, but, after all, it only reduces the deficit. So that if it were for the benefit of the United Kingdom, it would only reduce the deficit which Ireland owed. According to the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that would be a perfectly proper method of dealing with it. I would point out that this Grant of £700,000 is only postponing the period when Ireland will make any contribution to the Army or Navy, or any Imperial expenditure. The fact that more money is given to Ireland will delay the day when she ever makes any contribution to the Imperial services of this country. I cannot imagine any system of finance which can be more absurd than that—that the very fact that "more money is going to Ireland should prevent her from being liable to contribute to Imperial finance. So far as the question of the ratepayer is concerned, that matter has never really been investigated at all. The Local Taxation Committee has not yet dealt with Ireland or Scotland. There, is no means whatever of judging what is fair to give to Ireland, having regard to the burdens falling upon the ratepayers there. The ratepayers are in a privileged position, because they cannot be called upon to make any contribution at all for education or for the police, except so far as the Dublin Metropolitan Police are concerned. In London these two charges alone form an item of 2s. 9½d. in the £, an item which the Irish ratepayer is entirely free from.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

They do not get anything for education or the police.

Mr. CASSEL

The right hon. Gentleman say they are not getting anything, and that is quite true. But in every Grant you make to them you have to take into account the fact that they have to pay nothing for education and for the police. The question has never been considered by the Local Taxation Committee of what the proper share of Ireland is. The Government is rushing in haste to deal with this question because they are really not so much concerned with the English ratepayer as with the making of additional Grants for the relief of Irish finance. That is the real reason why this matter is being dealt with in such a way, in such a hurry, that the House of Commons has really no fair opportunity of judging the merits of the question. The British taxpayer is to be called upon to pay to the Irish Parilament, before the Irish Parliament has ever been brought into existence, and before we know that the Irish Parliament will ever be brought into existence. Upon that I am pleased to note that the right hon. Gentleman has received a memorial from various hon. Members on his own side, the purport of which was stated in the "Daily News." The signatories consider— that the Finance Bill of the year should deal with the annual finance, and that purposes for which new expenditure is required should first be sanctioned by legislation. Extra revenue should nut be raised until that has been done. Here the right hon. Gentleman is proposing to raise revenue from the British taxpayer even before the Irish Parliament has been brought into existence, and before we know whether there will be an Irish Parliament. The memorialists go on to say:— There is growing up a feeling in the Liberal party, if there in any readjustment this year, the purposes to which increased revenue should be devoted is the remission this year of the Sugar Duty. Next year, in our view, it may be too late. So that I submit it is unreasonable that the British taxpayers should be called upon to find money for the purposes of this Bill, when we do not know whether the Bill will ever pass into law, and many of us on this side of the House believe it never will pass into law. Now this change in the financial situation is an object lesson to prove that all advantages which were held out to Great Britain as the result of Home Rule finance are wholly illusory, and that all the objections-taken to it are real. What were the advantages held out? One of the main advantages held out—in fact, I think the main advantage—was that we should cut our loss. The Foreign Secretary, I think stated that we would not be justified in paying money over without having control unless we did limit our loss. Speaking on the 2nd May, 1912, he said:— We propose to put a definite limit to our loss, and in putting a definite limit to it we are told upon the other side of the House we ought not to go on incurring that loss at all unless we also retain control of her affairs. If we were not putting a limit to the loss I should agree, but we are putting a limit to that loss."—[OFFICAL. REPORT. 2nd May. 1912, col. 2095 Vol. XXXVII.] So that the only justification for parting with control is that we were putting a limit to the loss. How are we putting a limit to that loss? By increasing the deficit, by paying over £700,000, which is £300,000 in excess of the limit we are receiving. Then we are told we would be putting an end to and relieved of the necessity of discussing Irish finance. I venture to say that the discussion when this Bill passes, if it does, will be all the more bitter, and that it will be the duty of English representatives to scrutinise more closely than ever the Grants made to Ireland after she has an Irish Parliament, because Irish Members ought to bear in mind that any Grant that will be considered, and that will come into opera-tin after the Home Rule Bill is passed into law, will stand upon an entirely different footing, because the control by the Imperial Treasury will be gone after the money is parted with. Another advantage held out to us was that in future Irish expenditure and the amount of the Grants to be made to Ireland were not to depend upon the standard of expenditure in England. Here the amount of the Grant depends entirely, not upon the needs of Ireland, but upon the amount which you would think fit to grant to English local authorities in relief of rates, and depends simply upon that.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

No, no. We are getting nothing for education, and nothing for police, because there are no such Grants in Ireland.

Mr. CASSEL

That is quite true. But really what you do get is a certain proportion of the money which does not depend upon the needs of Ireland, but upon the standard set up by England, and upon a standard based on the amount granted to English local authorities. All the objections to this form of finance are proved to be real, because we see how unjust it is to Ireland on the one hand and how unjust it is to Great Britain on the other. It is unjust to Ireland, because in future she will be taxed without adequate representation, and it is a gross injustice to Irish taxpayers that they should be called upon to pay Income Tax when they are deliberately under-represented in the House of Commons; and, on the other hand, it is grossly unjust to the British taxpayer that he should be called upon to submit to forty-two Irish Members to decide in regard to money which he finds, and to which the Irish taxpayer contributes nothing, and which is no concern of the Irish people, as to how it should be expended. You have two wrongs, and the Government seems to be under the impression that two wrongs make a right. The whole foundation of this Bill is that two blacks make a white. It is unjust from the point of view of Ireland, and it is monstrously unjust from the point of view of Great Britain, and whatever may happen later I submit these financial proposals are so absurd and unreasonable that they ought to be resisted to the very last.

Mr. CLANCY

The hon. and learned Member who has just sat down commenced his speech by complaining that sufficient opportunity had not been given for discussing this matter, and in fact he charged the Government with the intention of depriving them of any opportunity whatever. It is not my business to defend the Government, but judging from the speech which the hon. and learned Member has just now delivered, I do not see what he wanted additional time for at all. I listened to the speech which the hon. and learned Member has just made—it was an able speech—but we have listened to that speech in substance again and again. There was nothing new in it whatever, and if I might sum up its effect in one sentence it would be that it was an appeal to what is called "the pocket of the British taxpayer," in order to influence his vote upon the question of self-government for Ireland. In my opinion that appeal is the meanest and shabbiest weapon in the armoury of Unionism. I have always thought it shabby and mean, especially when we consider the relations between England and Ireland in this matter of finance. When we remember the well-known facts of history—how this Parliament by their direct legislation crushed one Irish industry after the other until none remain; how it drove by acts of that kind millions of people out of the country and condemned millions of people to distress and starvation—I do think it a paltry thing and unworthy of any generous mind to haggle and to haggle over comparatively small sums now to be given to Ireland largely out of Ireland's own money. The hon. and learned Gentleman talked of the deficit to be made good, as he seemed to imply, by the taxpayers of Great Britain. I should like to make one or two remarks upon that subject of the deficit. In the first place, there is a deficit on the Irish account now before Home Rule is passed at all, and what I want to ask is who and what are responsible for that deficit. Why has this Parliament found Ireland unprofitable? The world, including the hon. and learned Gentleman, must know it is because of the past policy of the British Parliament in reference to Ireland. To maintain British rule in Ireland, you have had both to coerce and to bribe, and in that country, amongst those most loudly flaunting their loyalty, will be found the best paid. You have had to resort to coercion and to bribery, and that is the only alternative to Home Rule. It is always infinitely more costly to govern a country against its will than to govern a country with its consent. Having indulged in the luxury for generations of trying to govern Ireland against its will, you surely would be but adding one injustice to another if you asked Ireland now to pay all the cost of abandoning that policy! The hon. and learned Gentleman has spoken particularly, of course, of the increase in the deficit which, as he alleged, is to be brought about by the Budget of this year. I should like to point out, in the first place, that if the Home Rule Bill passed last year the deficit, as ascertained by actual revenue and expenditure, would have been considerably less than was then estimated, and that is quite plain from the financial memorandum issued within the past few days, and it is an important and significant fact, because it clearly indicates that the time when revenue and expenditure balance, and the financial relations between the two countries will be revised, cannot be so far off as has been hitherto supposed. The hon. and learned Gentleman appears to object to this new Grant. Will he tell us what his ground of complaint is—will he tell us plainly and boldly that we are not entitled to it?

Mr. CASSEL

My objection is to paying such a large amount of money out of the British Exchequer without any control whatever by the British taxpayer.

Mr. CLANCY

He objects to this Grant, I take it, in the first place, being made at all. I want to know will the hon. and learned Member say plainly and boldly that we are not entitled to it and ought not to get it? Is it his case that we should be taxed, and get no benefits from taxation; or, perhaps, the hon. and learned Gentleman would go as far as some of us would go, and say that Ireland should not be taxed for these additional Grants? But I do not think he will go so far as that, but will he assert that Ireland should contribute to additional taxation, but should not get any benefit at all?

Mr. CASSEL

The amount of the additional taxation is very much less than the amount to be paid over, and I object to British taxpayers' money being paid over if the British taxpayer is to have no control whatever.

Mr. CLANCY

That is rather evading the question. The question I put is this: We are to be subjected to additional taxation, and although we are to pay some of the money from these new Grants, we are not to get any of the Grants, forsooth, because we are going to have control of that money ourselves!

Mr. CASSEL

The hon. and learned Member misunderstood me. My point is that the amount of the Grants is very much larger than the estimated produce of the additional taxation.

Mr. CLANCY

What is that to the point? I wonder, if the hon. and learned Member had been here in the Parliaments of the past and found the result of the system of taxation as indulged in then was that Ireland was losing two millions to three millions a year, would he have risen in his place and objected to that result? He would not. He wants always to be on the winning side, and to have the benefits of taxation, no matter what the system of taxation is so long as Ireland pays for it. It seems to me that if he does not go to the length I say he does go, he has no case at all. The hon. and learned Member seems to be a fair-minded man, and I should like to convince him if I can. The policy of both sides of the House and both parties in the past has been one of indiscriminate taxation on the one hand, and the making of equivalent Grants to Ireland on the other. That was the policy of Mr. Goschen twenty-seven or twenty-eight years ago, and it was he who, as a Unionist Minister, actually fixed the very proportions of the Grant which it is now proposed should be made to the three countries at 80, 11, and 9. The same course was followed in the case of the Agricultural Grants in the year 1898 by the Unionist Administration of that time, and later on Mr. Wyndham, in the case of the Irish Development Grant, fixed another proportion, but the principle of equivalent Grants still prevailed. This principle was a necessary consequence of the system and of the principle of indiscriminate taxation. Otherwise you would have been openly, directly, and flagrantly taxing Ireland for the benefit of Great Britain alone. And now, forsooth, the principle of equivalent Grants is objected to on the flimsy, and even the fraudulent, pretext that we are obtaining autonomy in respect of Irish internal affairs! No doubt on the platforms of this country the false allegation will be made again and again that, although we are taxed indiscriminately with Great Britain, the British taxpayer is' unfairly mulcted. That contention will not hold water. The practice by which we now benefit is the usual practice, and practically the only difference, so far as Ireland is concerned, between the policy now pursued, or proposed to be pursued, in the present Budget and that of most other Budgets in the past, is that almost for the first time the additional taxation to be imposed will necessarily yield less in proportion in Ireland than in Great Britain. I do not myself bewail this, nor do I think British representatives ought to bewail it, because it will by no means balance the injury inflicted upon Ireland by the indiscriminate taxation on articles of consumption used in Ireland more generally than in England, which was the policy of the past.

It is a very sorry spectacle, I submit, to witness a politician like the hon. and learned Member looking complacently back to the time when the fiscal arrangements were such as year after year to render absolutely certain—for three-quarters of a century the thing was done—that Ireland should contribute £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 in excess of her fair proportion of taxation, and now protesting, though the principle of indiscriminate taxation is still observed, against its working in our favour. With all respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, I do not think his speech contains much that need be answered. There was, however, one remark which I should like to notice. He said that the additional Grant to be given to Ireland might be used by the Irish Parliament to reduce the Income Tax. Let us suppose that the Irish Parliament reduced the Income Tax in Ireland by twopence, threepence or fourpence. I wonder how long the British Parliament would remain without noticing the fact, and acting so as to raise the taxation to the old point, especially if the British Parliament consisted of a majority of Members like the hon. and learned Member for West St. Pancras (Mr. Cassel). I do not think the Irish Parliament, bad as it may be in the imagination of the hon. and learned Member, will consist of such downright fools. Like nearly all the other arguments I have heard on this matter, that is an argument against the principle of Home Rule at all. The whole Unionist case is based on the assumption that Ireland consists mostly of fools, and partly of rogues, and that between them they will play ducks and drakes with the national moral and intellectual interests of their country.

I have a criticism to make upon the policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The hon. and learned Member said we are getting an enormous additional Grant, but I say that we are not getting our full share. The Grants for England and Wales are proposed to be given in aid of the rates, and because they are rate-aiding Grants here, it is assumed that the equivalent Grants to Ireland should also be given in aid of the rates and that alone. I absolutely deny the justice of such a proposition, and it can only be justified if the circumstances of the two countries were the same, and they are not the same. If that principle were admitted and acted upon by Government after Government, we might never get an equivalent Grant. Grants might be given to England for objects which do not exist in Ireland at all, and if that were done, and Grants were refused to Ireland because those objects did not exist in Ireland, then would anyone say that the transaction was honest and fair? I put it to the hon. and learned Gentleman himself, and I hardly think he would answer that question in the affirmative. Taking, for the sake of argument, and that only the Goschen proportions as being just, Ireland ought to get for her own urgent needs, whatever they may be, one-ninth of the whole sum to be given. I have good authority for this proposition, and it is an authority which the hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues will, I am sure, respect. Mr. Wyndham proposed to Parliament the expenditure of a certain sum of money for the development of Ireland as a consequence of the Education Grant of £1,400,000 a year to England. In 1902 the Education Grant was made, and in the following year Mr. Wyndham introduced his Trish Development Fund Bill, and in proposing the adoption of that Bill, which set aside an equivalent Grant of £185,000 for Ireland, he said—and I commend this to the attention of the hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues:— Last year the House authorised the expenditure of nearly £1,400,000 a year for the purposes of education in England. We hold that this Grant is a due set-off to that, and that it belongs to Ireland in equity quite as much as the Irish Church Surplus Fund belongs to Ireland. May I say to hon. Members who have not addressed themselves very closely to this question that we hold that, the system of equal individual taxation must be maintained, but that being the case when a large sum is allocated to exclusively English objects, it has always been the practice of the House of Commons, for which there are several precedents in recent years, to allocate an equivalent Grant to Ireland and Scotland. This is an admission that the objects of the Grant need not be the same in Great Britain and in Ireland, and the Bill which Mr. Wyndham carried through enabled the greater part of that Grant of £185,000 a year, which was the equivalent of the Education Grant to England, to be devoted, not to education, but to land purchase. This brings me to the complaint I have to make on the score of the Budget. My hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) referred to this matter in his speech a week ago, and he pointed out that there were no Grants to be made in respect of education (except as regards new services) and police. The Grants were refused in respect of those two services on the ground that we made no contributions out of the rates in aid of either of those services. That is not strictly true as regards the police, and I really think that the facts of the case cannot have been present to the mind of Ministers when they came to their decision. The Dublin Metropolitan Police costs a very large sum. They cost the citizens of Dublin, between what they have to pay out of the rates and in fines paid by the inhabitants of the districts and out of local licences, about £55,000 a year. The principal source of the payment is an 8d. rate, and that is an increasing rate. It is 8d. in the £ on the valuation, and the valuation is increasing year by year because the city is growing, and the consequence is that there is an ever-growing impost upon the citizens in respect of this police force. The answer of the Government formerly, and the answer of both Governments, was that we obtained out of the fund a larger proportion for the cost of police than they were paying in any other city in the United Kingdom. That is true. What is the reason? What is the explanation? It is a very simple one. Dublin is over-policed, and over-policed for Imperial purposes. I can make out a case by narrating a few figures. Dublin has a population of 390,187. Its police force numbers 1,194. Sheffield, with a larger population, of 409,000, has only a police force of 575. Manchester, with a population of 606,824, has actually less than Dublin, namely, 1,158. The city of Liverpool, with 704,000 population—

Sir F. BANBURY

Is it in order to discuss the police forces in Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and other English towns?

The CHAIRMAN

I think the hon. and learned Member was quite in order as far as founding his argument in reply to the hon. Member for St. Pancras upon the statistics is concerned, but I do not think that he ought to give us, on an occasion like this, the statistics on which his argument is founded.

Mr. CLANCY

Of course, I bow to your ruling, and I do so willingly. The right hon. Gentleman the present Chief Secretary fully admitted the statement I am making. He admitted that Dublin was over-policed.

The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell)

Some time ago.

Mr. CLANCY

Some time ago, yes, but it is over-policed at the present time. The numbers of the police are practically the same, and the right hon. Gentleman has done nothing to reduce them. The police are the same in numbers and the population is growing, and so is the cost of the police to the citizens. I would mention this, which I think is most relevant to the occasion: A rate of 8d. in the £ is levied m Dublin for the police, but the highest rate in England is 5d. in the £, and the next highest is 4d. in the £, which is levied in two or three cities. The majority of the police rates in all the rest of the English towns vary from 3½d. down to 2d. These figures show that there is good reason for complaining that a larger proportion of the cost is paid by the Dublin Metropolitan Police district than by any similar police district in England, and, therefore, as far as the Dublin Metropolitan Police is concerned, the grounds upon which the Grant was refused absolutely fail. I will not labour the question of education, but I would like to make one or two remarks upon it. It is true that we are not paying anything out of the rates in aid of education, but, supposing we paid our share out of the rates, you would still not be paying us our fair share in the way of Educational Grants. I assert, as a matter which could be proved if I were permitted to do so, that the Grants made in respect of education are not in proportion, and have never been in proportion, to the Grants made for education in England especially, and in a great many parts of Scotland. The question is not whether we pay out of the rates or not, but whether you are distributing these Grants fairly, and I assert most positively that, if we did contribute out of the rates to-morrow, in the same way that England is contributing, you would still be short in paying us our share of the Grant from the Imperial Exchequer and there is no justification for that course of conduct.

I think it is generally forgotten that there is a very large voluntary charge upon Ireland for education. In the case of non-vested schools, I think I am right in saying that they have to build them without any aid from the Exchequer. They have to furnish these schools, they have to fit them up, and they have to supply the children with their utensils, books, pens, ink and paper, all of which are supplied in England out of the Imperial Grants. I rather think I am right in saying that the total amount contributed by Ireland, not out of any rates at all, but voluntarily, is a little short of £150,000 a year. These main facts, to my mind at least, justify our complaint that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not taken into acount all the circumstances of the case in denying us any equivalent Grant in respect of either education or police. I do hope, before the Budget is through, that he will take those circumstances into account and do us justice. We ask for no more than justice.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

It is a somewhat remarkable fact, this being the Committee of Finance on the Home Rule Bill, that we owe the Debate to St. Pancras and not to St. Patrick, and for my part I feel very much indebted to the hon. and learned Gentleman who put forward the claim that some time should be allowed for the discussion of this stage of the Bill, especially having regard to the Budget of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We are discussing, however, this Financial Resolution in the shadow of some new Bill that we have not seen. We do not know whether there will be a Finance Committee on this Bill, but we do know that the right hon. Gentleman, who is at the head of the Local Government Board, and who has been the chief twin-screw in this matter on behalf of the Government, has thought it necessary to allude to this forthcoming Bill and to discuss the question of the Customs upon it. I do not understand the meaning of these allusions, or his attempt to dissipate the Canadian apprehensions, or any other matter of that kind. All we know is this. There was a Cabinet Council, and the right hon. Gentleman apparently came from it quite fresh, hot or cold, as the case may be, and he thought it necessary to remind the House of the fact, and from that I augur that in return for the dismemberment of Ireland there is going to be some additional financial juggle in this forthcoming Bill. There is, however, a proverb in Ireland that it is time enough to shake hands with the devil when yon meet him, and accordingly I do not intend to say more upon that branch of the sub- ject, chiefly because I am afraid that, if I did, you would rise in your place and call me to order.

6.0 P.M.

The President of the Local Government Board referred to the allocation to be-made by some future Chancellor of the Exchequer—I presume some Gentleman sitting behind me on these benches—and I did expect some relevant criticism on the proposal of the Government from what I may call the unfledged official point of view of the half-hatched out Chancellor of the Exchequer who sees his blushing honours coming upon him. The right hon. Gentleman who has opened this matter has, I think, given a new figure to the House. I do not think we have had the figure in any previous statement made by any Minister, but I would like to tell the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for St. Pancras, that every figure hitherto given us as an estimate by the Government has been falsified by events. He has placed his argument before the English people in this way. He has said that the Government estimate that the new yield of the Budget is £435,000, and he suggested that we would get something like £767,000. This, as I understand it, is the figure we get to-day for the first time. It is the figure which I took from the right hon. Gentleman. Therefore, the hon. Member for St. Pancras draws the conclusion that Ireland will be something like £300,000 to the good. This is the estimate formed on the second Resolutions of the Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Let me give the estimate on the first Resolution, and see how far it has been justified. When I come to mention and analyse his action in regard: to Ireland over the so-called Goschen proposal, I do not hesitate to say that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer has been the most ruthless and unsparing Chancellor of the Exchequer, so far as Ireland is concerned, that has ever sat at that box. He has shown himself absolutely merciless in the past, and in the present proposal he has shown himself absolutely and relatively mean. Here is the figure we get in the Budget of 1909–10, and this figure was vouched to us in the White Paper signed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, viséd by the President of the Local Government Board, countersigned by the Home Secretary, and specially countersigned by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—all the financial talent of the Government. Their solemn estimate was that the Budget—which raised our taxation on whisky alone by 3s. 9d.—would produce £435,000, and that was accepted by the Irish party behind me as the solemn guarantee of four Cabinet Ministers by way of treaty with Ireland—such was the expression used by the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon). The £435,000 has swollen, in the shape of additional taxation, to £1,882,000. Does the hon. Member for St. Pancras (Mr. Cassel) think me unjust if I say that the Treasury experts who are prepared to take the votes of eighty Members under false pretences, are likely to go equally astray with regard to their present estimate? Does he think John Bull is so unpatriotic? Why they are always engaged in skinning Ireland, and you may be positively sure that the present estimate of £435,000 will soon grow and blot out the supposed Grant that is being made to us of £767,000. I do not for a moment say that I do not welcome this additional Grant. I do welcome it. On the Second Beading of the Home Rule Bill the same right hon. Gentleman, when he was attacked from the Conservative side and asked to show one single person or authority who would say that his finance was sound, replied, "We have Professor Bastable," while the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. Redmond) went so far as to say that the Bill was quite fair and quite adequate. Now the figure, which was the solemn standard figure only six weeks ago, has been "Bastabled" out of existence by the new proposal. We fought the finance of this Bill two Sessions running. Last Session we refused to vote for a single one of these Financial Clauses, and u e were denounced as unpatriotic. It was said, "Why not trust a gracious, loving Government that is showering gifts on Ireland 2 "We were told that this Bill would give Ireland absolutely virginal ground for her finance, and the very same men who quoted Professor Bastable and the Member for Waterford now tell us that the Irish Parliament will do well to get £767,000 in addition. These were the Gentlemen who showed such financial genius in 1910, when four of you made a false estimate, and we get the same financial genius when, eighteen months later, you ask us to cheer for Professor Bastable and say that the Irish Parliament is justly dealt with in the proposals put forward six weeks ago. Here is the answer to the hon. Member for St. Pancras: If six weeks ago Ireland was getting enough, surely now we are getting £700,000 too much! Logically, I see no answer to that. There is no answer except by telling more falsehoods. [Interruption.] You could not have been telling the truth six weeks ago and be telling it now. You could not have been telling the truth on the Budget when you said it was going to produce £400,000 additional, whereas it turns out it is producing £1,800,000. Yet the same men get up with the same effrontery at that box and repeat similar statements and then attack us for refusing to believe them.

Let us come to the Goschen proportion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer once sat below the Gangway, and I have the keenest recollection that he joined Mr. Sexton and myself in opposing the Goschen proportion as being unjust to Ireland. Yet now it is not half good enough for Ireland. What is his present plan? Let this be remembered. The hon. and learned Member for Dublin County (Mr. Clancy) has just shown that when Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in 1902, gave an additional Grant for education in England, Mr. George Wyndham insisted on a similar Grant being made for Ireland. I felt deeply grateful to him. I remember the arguments advanced both publicly and privately, and I remember that when Sir Michael Hicks-Beach said we were entitled to no equivalent Grant, Mr. George Wyndham retorted, "Give us your' no equivalent' Grant for Ireland "— and we got it. The other day we were entitled to an equivalent Grant under the Insurance Act. How was it that the learned Member for Dublin County and the other embryo Chancellors of the Exchequer did not press, as we are pressing now, for what Mr. George Wyndham insisted on the Tory party giving to Ireland as an equivalent in the matter of education, although Ireland at that time was paying no education rate whatever? Why did they not press that the Liberal party should give us an equivalent Grant in the matter of insurance? True, we get £100,000. Is that our proportion? Is it the Goschen proportion? Is it the Wyndham proportion? Is it any proportion except the rule-of-thumb proportion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? We, having regard to the slum conditions in the towns, which the Larkin agitation proved twelve months ago, when Dublin was seething under that agitation, we, knowing the condition of affairs, pressed both publicly and privately that an additional Grant should be given us for housing in towns. But at the instance of these embryo Chancellors of the Exchequer we were told that we were to be content, that it was a myth—that was the phrase that was used—and they cried "Freedom before Finance," as if finance is not the breath of freedom.

I come now to the Goschen proportion. The Wyndham proportion was an honest proportion. It was a fair proportion. The Goschen proportion was one-ninth, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has admitted that ho joined us twenty-five years ago in declaring it to be unjust to Ireland. What does he do to-day? I used the phrase "mean" just now, not as regards the right hon. Gentleman personally, but as regards the finance for which he is responsible in his proposals. What ho does is this. Mr. Goschen gave us absolutely a ninth, but the right hon. Gentleman has invented a new device for tricking Ireland in the matter. He says, "I will take the services, but I will omit those as to which Ireland contributes nothing, namely, the police and education." Does Ireland contribute nothing for education? Were we contributing nothing during the period in which £3,000,000 per annum of taxation was wrung from us? Was not that a contribution for education? Look at the Christian Brothers' schools. It is true they are not maintained out of the rates, but they are maintained out of the pockets of the people. There are, too, the Nuns' schools, and the Presentation Brothers' schools. When it is a Protestant question you quarrel with the way in which the Catholic Church drags money out of the Popish pocket, out of the pockets of the poor, down-trodden Papists in order to provide instruction according to their religion. You do not contribute to the Convent school, the Presentation Brothers' school, the Christian Brothers' school, and the Nuns' school, yet every one of these is a charge upon the population. They cost the Imperial authority nothing, because you have insisted on forcing upon us the most detestable system of education in the world, one over which we have no control. And yet because we try to give religious education at our own expense the Chancellor of the Exchequer, voicing the Nonconformist conscience, is to use that disability which this Parliament has inflicted upon us to even belittle the Goschen ninth, and to do it with the George Wyndham principle staring hint in the face.

Let me deal with another point. The right hon. Gentleman proposes to make these deductions because he says we pay no charges for the police. I put aside for a moment the somewhat puny argument that Belfast and Dublin do make large local contributions to the police. I say that the force in Ireland which you have set up is not a police force at all; it is a soldiery; you maintain them as soldiers entirely out of proportion to the normal domestic social wants of the people. They are your soldiers. They are not all police. I am not saying anything disparaging of the men, I am only dealing with the argument of the right hon. Gentleman. Her knows what the Irish police are and have been in the past, and he knows, too, what has been our educational difficulty, and yet he fastens in this way upon this poor, miserable little island and he uses an argument which no Tory has ever used. Mr. Goschen, who was a Tory, or rather a Unionist, gave us a ninth, and that was bettered by George Wyndham, and I say it comes with ill-grace, from a Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer that in regard to these two points of education and the police, he should obey the lash of the Treasury experts and make these deductions. He will write Lloyd George down as a meaner man than Goschen. That is really what it means. I feel indebted to the hon. Member for St. Pancras for the arguments he has addressed to the Committee. But some of us on these benches feel with regard to this Home. Rule Bill—"we who are about to the salute thee"—that there is going to be no Home Rule Bill for us—no Home Rule Bill for Ireland. There is some other Bill on the stocks, but what it is we are not told, although one would suppose that, before the Third Reading of this Bill, it would only be fair on the part of the Government to let us know what the Government are going to do, both on the question of finance and on the question of self-government. I sometimes wonder whether hon. Gentlemen behind me know. Are they any wiser than we are? Those of you who visit Dublin may see what is supposed to be a comic picture of the Irishman. He is engaged in driving a number of pigs to market. A fellow countryman asks him, "Is it going to Kinsale you are?" and the man in the picture says, "S-sh! The pigs think they are going to Kinsale, but they are really going to be shipped at Cork." I wonder if hon. Gentlemen behind me, on this 20th May, 1914, in the third year of these great Home Rule Debates, know whether they are going to be shipped or carted? I will not use this opportunity any further on that point, but I will say this, that the attitude we have taken up throughout this business has been that we have been deceived by false Estimates in two Budgets, as I believe, and in this Home Rule Bill, and that now, when a pretended attempt has been made to repair the errors we pointed out, a system has been adopted which is most unfair, without parallel, and entirely a new creation of the Treasury of England.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

I am really reluctant to intervene even for a few minutes between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and that expression of gratitude for the cordial support his efforts have received from both sections of his Irish supporters which I am sure he is anxious to make. I wonder whether any stranger who has come into our Debate without the opportunity of consulting our Order Paper could have gathered, either from the speech of the hon. and learned Member for North Dublin (Mr. Clancy) or the hon. and learned Member for North-East Cork (Mr. T. M. Healy), that we were discussing a formal stage on the third occasion of passing a Home Rule Bill which was to settle, once for all, the grievances of Ireland, which was to remove the discontent which Irishmen have sometimes expressed with our procedure, and which was to convert them into a happy, prosperous, and united people, most cordially allied to us and most eager to co-operate in all purposes of common welfare! I am not going into the past record of the Treasury calculations, or into much of the history of which the two hon. and learned Gentlemen from Ireland have spoken. I think a great part of what the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. T. M. Healy) said in relation to the action of the late Mr. Wyndham was true—in fact, I know it was. Mr. Wyndham always stood out manfully for what he thought to be Ireland's rights, and even for generous treatment under the Union beyond, perhaps, her strictly rightful claims. I, for one, say now what I have said before, that while the Union prevails and there is legislation and taxation by a common Parliament for all those purposes, common or distinct, I am not one to examine too closely the relative balance of receipts and expenditure, and I, for one, was quite content to concur in the view put forward by Mr. Wyndham in my time, as in the time when Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was Chancellor of the Exchequer, namely, that when there was a Grant to this country there should be an equivalent Grant to Ireland, but that it should not be necessary for Ireland to spend that Grant of hers on the particular purposes on which we chose to spend ours, but, if she had other and more urgent needs, she might devote her money to those purposes. I only say this would become impossible if the line of argument pursued by the hon. Member for North Dublin were to prevail, because he takes the Grant for English education as a grievance because there is no equivalent Grant for Irish education. He omits to notice that the equivalent Grants for Ireland went for other Irish purposes.

What is of more importance is the bearing of this discussion this afternoon upon the present and the future. We are nominally discussing a Home Rule Bill which, according to the Prime Minister, cannot be changed. It is owing to the persistency and ability of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for West St. Pancras (Mr. Cassel) and, as he said, to the accidental presence of the Prime Minister at the moment when he rose to move his Amendment, that we are having this discussion at all. Fruitful the discussion cannot be, because if we do make any alteration in this Resolution there is no Committee stage wherein we can amend the Bill to which it refers. It is quite idle to suppose that hon. Gentlemen who have supported that Bill all through will permit an alteration to be made in the Resolution which could not lead to the amending of the Bill but must lead to its own defeat. We are, therefore, nominally going through a discussion of a Bill which is already past change, and must be passed exactly as it is in spite of anything that may be said. What we have really discovered is that the Bill which we are to pass next week for the last time in this House is to be amended a week or two afterwards in the Finance Bill, apart from any measure which the Prime Minister has undertaken to produce. What will be the result? Irish Members are dissatisfied. The hon. Member for North Dublin was as dissatisfied, although he was more plaintive and less denunciatory, as the hon. Member for North-East Cork. Irishmen are dissatisfied, and I think they have a right to be dissatisfied. For what has happened! The contention all along has been that we, a rich country, cut our coat according to our cloth, but we insist that Ireland should be dressed according to the measure of cloth which we have, and not according to the measure of cloth that she has; that, because we judge certain expenditure to be desirable to ourselves, we impose it on Ireland, and that, because we can well afford to pay taxes, we raise those taxes in Ireland.

That has been the burden of the Irish grievance ever since I entered this House. That is the grievance which the Government professed they were going to remedy by means of Home Rule when they talked to their Irish supporters, and, for a long time, I thought that was really going to be the result of the Home Rule Bill. It is only when we get on to something we manage to discuss that we begin to see from the utterances of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that that would not be at all what is done. Here we have an illustration of it. I am going to talk for the moment, as the President of the Local Government Board talked, as if the whole of the new taxation we were raising was for the relief of rates or new services of a social character—rates, insurance, and the like. That is subject to a qualification to which I must come afterwards. On that footing, we in this country, the majority in the House, at any rate, think that we are rich enough to afford, and that we ought to afford, certain new taxation. Thereupon we burden Ireland with exactly the same taxation. If you do that, you do not cure the Irish grievance. It is quite true that as a result of that you give Ireland money to spend she would never have to spend otherwise; but the point of Ireland's grievance against our administration is that too much money is being spent on Ireland already, that the cost of the services is more than she can afford, and that the amount you take out of the country by taxation is more than she can afford to pay. All those grievances which you were to cure and put an end to by your Home Rule Bill you are increasing instead of diminishing by the financial proposals we are now discussing. That is the Irish point of view, or, rather, it is one part of the Irish point of view. There is added to it the complaint by Irish Members that even on this showing they do not get their fair share of the taxation which is raised. That is a question on which I have often differed from hon. Members below the Gangway, and I am not going to argue it now. I only say again that you have not settled your Irish grievance, and that there is no fulfilment of your promise that we were to be rid of the Irish grievance. You can see that every time you raise taxation for purposes common to the United Kingdom, you are going to have the whole Irish grievance over again, aggravated and envenomed by the fact that you will be dealing not merely with Members of a Commons House of Parliament, but with Members of another House of Parliament, who will have a power of resistance and a power of obstruction incomparably greater than have those who sit with us in this House.

If the position is as uninviting as that from the point of view of Irish Members, is it more satisfactory from the point of view of English and Scottish Members? What is our inducement to pass Home Rule—I mean what is the inducement held out by the Government? I will not go over the whole field, although I could state that in a sentence, but it was to make peace on terms honourable and satisfactory to both parties. There is no peace; there is no agreement! Members of both sections of the Irish party declare that you are committing a fresh injustice, and both in their Dublin Parliament and so far as they are represented here, they will continue to press that view upon you, and to stir this old Irish grievance. More than that, we British Members were assured that we should not only get relief from the constant burden of Irish Bills and discussions, but we were to cut our financial loss once and for all. I take the quotation which was used by my hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Cassel), but which puts this so well that I think it will bear reading again. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs said: We propose to put a definite limit to that loss, and in putting that definite limit to it we think, on this side of the House, that we ought not to go on incurring a future loss at all unless we also retain control of Irish affairs. If we are not putting a limit to that loss I should agree, but we are putting a limit to that loss. What has become of the limit? The limit was fixed at £2,000,000. Ireland was actually costing, according to the Government's calculation, £1,500,000 more than she paid in taxation. She was to be endowed with a sum of £500,000 in addition, to put her on her legs. When the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) proudly declares for "freedom before finance"—

Mr. DILLON

I never made the statement.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

I understand it was the hon. Member for West Belfast who proudly claimed "freedom before finance." I wish he would reduce that to practice, and, as he is going to have freedom, absolve us from the necessity of paying a subsidy.

Mr. DILLON

I beg to point out that we have not got the freedom yet.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

May I infer—it will be the first time, I think, that any Irish Member has said so—that if the hon. Member can get the freedom he will be glad to surrender the finance? No. Take the freedom if you can, but stick to the money anyway.

Mr. LEIF JONES

Are you ready to give it?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

No, I am not. That was the limit originally fixed by the Government—the limit of which the Foreign Secretary spoke—£1,500,000, to balance the expenditure of £500,000 additional, gradually diminishing to £200,000, in order to give them something to play with. Now, we have raised new taxation throughout the United Kingdom. What is to become of it? The President of the Local Government Board talks as if it were raised solely to relieve rates, or for new services. It is partly raised to pay for the Navy. Ireland being established as a separate entity, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that if a fresh call were made for the Navy Ireland would pay her share. Observe what happens. I do not know whether it is necessary to say, in consequence of this interruption of the hon. Member (Mr. Dillon), that we are obliged to argue this question on the footing on which the President of the Local Government Board has put it, that the Home Rule Bill is to pass into law, and then its financial provisions are to be amended by the Finance Act of the current year. Why does the Chancellor of the Exchequer not propose to carry out the policy which he laid down to the House? It is in the President of the Local Government Board read:— Let us suppose that the Chancellor of the Exchequer puts an additional 2d. on the Income Tax to meet a great naval crisis. Not only would he be in a position to make that charge over the whole of the United Kingdom, but I think it would be his obvious duty to do so. It would be a charge which ought to be home by the whole of the United Kingdom. That is my view with regard to that question. I do not know whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer will reply that he has satisfied that by making the charge bear upon the whole of the United Kingdom. What he does in the case of Ireland is not only to require nothing from it for this new additional naval expense, but to return to her more than she pays. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in answering a speech of mine, that if the Home Rule Bill never became law, and the old system went on, the most you could do by imposing taxation, was to lessen the deficiency. But things would be so much better if the Home Rule Bill were allowed to pass. Now when you impose a tax under the Home Rule Bill you do not lessen the deficit. You increase it. The limit of £2,000,000 has vanished, and the deficit calculated by the President of the Local Government Board for the first full year of Home Rule and the new taxes is raised from the original £2,000,000 to £2,300,000.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The right hon. Gentleman's argument is stronger than he has stated it. It is £2,700,000.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

So I made it, but I thought I had taken the figures of the right hon. Gentleman. The deficit which was to be limited at £2,000,000 is now to be £2,700,000. This additional money is to be given to Ireland, not on specific conditions as it is doled out to local authorities, but as a free Grant to use exactly as they please. I wish we sometimes had the Ministers here who have given the pledges-to answer for the breaking of the pledges which they have given. The Foreign-Secretary said:— If we were not putting a limit to the loss. I should agree that it would not be right to go on incurring that loss unless we also retained control of Irish affairs. There is no control retained here. There is no limit put to the loss, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer sets this precedent, that every time the burdens of Great Britain are increased, a heavier subsidy is to be paid to Ireland out of our taxes. I have always thought that in the attempt-to set up Home Rule you were doing an injustice to both countries, and you were making a bargain which was bad for both countries. It is quite certain it is not a bargain which meets with any gratitude from hon. Members below the Gangway, but from the point of view of the British citizen as contrasted with the Irish, you destroy by these proposals the two great inducements which you held out to them—one that a limit should be put to the financial loss which he incurred in the government of Ireland, and to the support which he had to give to that government, and the other the promise that as the result of your proposal we should cease to hear Irish debates or be troubled with Irish grievances.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George)

We have been discussing not so much the financial provisions of the Home Rule Bill as the financial provision which is made by the Finance Bill. I say that because the hon. and learned Gentleman complained that had it not been for an accident we should not have had a discussion at all of the character which we have had to-day. As a matter of fact the whole of this discussion can be taken over again on the Second Beading of the Finance Bill. It can be taken on the Clause which deals with that matter, and therefore none of those criticisms which have been levelled at the Government to-day, and which have been almost exclusively confined to the additional provision made by the Finance Bill, would be ruled out even if this Resolution were voted without any debate at all.

Mr. CASSEL

What I said was that we should have had no opportunity of discussing it before the Third Reading of the Home Rule Bill.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I agree, but that is quite an irrelevant observation. The hon. and learned Gentleman assumes that this provision is an amendment of the Home Rule Bill. The very quotation which any right hon. Friend made from a speech delivered by me on the Home Rule Bill shows that an operation of this kind were contemplated, not as an amendment of the Home Rule Bill, but as what might take place in the working of the Home Rule Bill in its relations between Irish finance and Imperial finance. Is it to be suggested that every time the Imperial Parliament raises money from Ireland for what seem to be Imperial purposes, that is necessarily an amendment of the Home Rule Bill? If it is, it shows that they are proceeding on the assumption that the Imperial Parliament is not to retain supreme control over Ireland. They are the real Separatists, and we are the real Unionists. May I point out another inconsistency in the position of hon. Members? They are proceeding upon two perfectly contradictory assumptions. First of all, when they want to make one kind of argument they proceed on the assumption that the Home Rule Bill is not passed. Not only that, but the hon. and learned Gentleman said that in his judgment it would never pass. When the argument suited him that was his assumption. When it suited him the assumption was directly the contrary. He assumed that the Home Rule Bill has already passed, and that we were legislating with an Irish Parliament already set up. They really cannot take both assumptions. They are perfectly inconsistent.

The same thing applies to another argument of the hon. and learned Gentleman and to other arguments which have been advanced. First of all, he and those who are associated with him condemn us for being too liberal to Ireland. On the other hand, we have been condemned very severely from below the Gangway for not being liberal enough. I notice that hon. Members cheered both sentiments. They listened, not merely with interest, but with approval and occasionally with acclamation, to a savage denunciation by the hon. Member (Mr. W. O'Brien) because we did not give the Goschen terms, being nine-eightieths of the services which are at present borne entirely out of Imperial funds. It would have been infinitely more liberal than the present terms. Hon. Members cheered that sentiment, and they equally cheered the sentiment of the right hon. Gentleman when he denounced us for giving anything under these proposals to Ireland. Let me put this proposition to the right hon. Gentleman. He says that when we raise money, not merely for the purpose of the Navy, but also for the purposes of local taxation, as far as the first is concerned, we have a perfect right, under the principles which we lay down, to do so; but, as far as. I understand, his argument is that, so far as the last is concerned, we ought to raise out of Ireland her proportion of the naval contribution, and we should not give her anything under the second branch. Unless he says that, I really do not know quite what his argument comes to. We are raising, by means of taxation, money for two Imperial purposes. The first is the maintenance of the Navy; the second is these great local services throughout the United Kingdom. Are we to say to Ireland, "We take from you your contribution towards the Navy, but we will not give to you your contribution towards local purposes"?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

What I asked was why you took no contribution towards the Navy, and paid them back £300,000 more than they gave?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

What we have done is exactly what the right hon. Gentleman would have done if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer with no Home Rule Parliament set up.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Then you have not cut the loss.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

We hope to cut the loss in the course of the next two or three months, when the Bill has gone through. Here is a difficulty which we have to meet. We impose an Imperial tax for the purpose of meeting that deficiency. If we do that we cannot say to Ireland, "We treat you differently. We take from you a contribution towards the Navy, and we will not give you any share for the purpose of your local rates and services." That will be a gross injustice. It happens that Ireland benefits. We happen to be the richer country, and for that reason Ireland benefits to the extent of about £300,000 a year. But if you are going to raise an Imperial Tax for Imperial purposes, and levy it on Ireland as well as on the rest of the United Kingdom, you must give Ireland her fair share, and that is the principle upon which we proceed. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman challenges the position which I take up, that until Home Rule has been carried Ireland must be treated just in the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Will the right hon. Gentleman let me put a question to him? Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that if Home Rule had been passed at the end of last Session instead of this Session he would have raised the taxation in Ireland, as he is now raising it, and would then have made no Grants in return?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I should then have had a very different set of considerations presented to me. I should then have had to consider the question as it affects the local finance and the local services of Ireland, and I should then have had to consider whether it would be better to leave it to the Irish Parliament, or whether it should be dealt with by the Imperial Parliament. And when the right hon. Gentleman charges my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary with not having redeemed his pledge, I say that was a pledge on the assumption that a Home Rule Parliament had been set up in Ireland.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

It is a difference of a month or two. If this Debate had come on after, instead of before, Whitsuntide, and the Home Rule Bill had gone through the House of Commons, and had reached another place, and was then on its way to reach the Throne by the automatic procedure which is to take it there then I understand the right hon. Gentleman says it would have been proper to put the new Income Tax and the Death Duties on Ireland, and to take the money so received from Ireland as some contribution to the Army and Navy.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I never said anything of the kind.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Then what do you say?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

That is not the proposition I put. What I put is this: That if you had a Home Rule Parliament there with complete control over the services which we are subsidising by means of this Budget, then the position would have been an entirely different one. I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman says it is a question of a month or two. It is very gratifying that he should take that view. I agree with him that if there were a Home Rule Parliament any Chancellor of the Exchequer standing here would have to take into account the fact that the local services had been transferred altogether from the control of this Parliament to the Parliament in Dublin, and when my right hon. Friend talked about cutting-the loss, there never was a greater argument for Home Rule than in the present position in which we find ourselves. As long as you have not got Home Rule the loss will increase, and is bound to increase. Anyone looking at the White Paper cart see that for themselves. Ever since Home Rule was rejected in 1886 the contribution of Ireland has gone steadily down, until now we are losing money on the transaction. The Budget of this year is only a continuation of the same policy, and if there were no Home Rule carried this year, and the right hon. Gentleman opposite was standing here for the next four or five years, he would find exactly the same tendency—instead of getting more money out of Ireland, he would be losing steadily, until the deficiency, which is now about £2,000,000, would grow until it might be £3,000,000, or even £4,000,000. That is an inevitable tendency.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

What I really want the right hon. Gentleman to tell me is, how the passage of the Home Rule Bill will stop that? I invite him to take the present Budget as an example. Suppose Home Rule had been in operation, what difference would it have made in his present proposals?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I have already said that the difference would be that the Chancellor of the Exchequer at that moment would be entitled to say local services are a question for the local Parliament. He would take them into account. He would take either of the two contingencies into account. Either the Imperial Parliament could legislate for the whole of the United Kingdom and raise money for the United Kingdom—I said so on 2nd December, 1912, and the very contingency which has arisen I gave a forecast of then—you could raise money either for Imperial purposes, for the Navy, or for social reform under Imperial control.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

Before the right hon. Gentleman passes from that, does he state, on his official responsibility, that the present loss is £2,000,000 before the Budget was brought in?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Before the present Budget was brought in, I think it was about £1,800,000.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

We make it £1,200,000 on your own figures.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

That is not the case. At any rate, for my present purposes, what I am pointing out is that there is a very substantial deficiency, and it is a growing deficiency, and as long as you have not got Home Rule and the whole responsibility for local services is vested in the Imperial Parliament, the result will be that that deficiency will grow.

Sir E. CARSON

Will the right hon. Gentleman say, supposing Home Rule had passed and was in force now, what would become of the extra money that has been got from Ireland? That is what we want to know.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

That is on the assumption that the Imperial Parliament would raise the money in Ireland. I do not see why the right hon. Gentleman should assume—

Sir E. CARSON

Does the right hon. Gentleman as Chancellor of the Exche- quer contemplate the possibility of having a different Income Tax for Ireland from that for England?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, the Income Tax is not the only tax in the present Budget. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]

Sir E. CARSON

No, but it is one of the taxes. Part of the money comes from that.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

But there are other taxes which go to make up the £440,000. The right bon and learned Gentleman will have to bear that in mind. Now may I reply to the hon. and learned Member for North-East Cork?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

Before the right hon. Gentleman turns to that, will he be good enough to answer the question which I have put half a dozen times, and which my right hon. and learned Friend has just put? If you had Home Rule now in force, and if you raise the Income Tax 2d. as you do now, would you pay over the 2d. to the Irish Parliament or keep it for Imperial purposes?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

That depends entirely on the purpose to which you put it. [Laughter.] Before I had indicated what my answer was to be there was that vacant laugh from the Back Benches opposite.

The CHAIRMAN

This is a complicated question and requires careful handling. I would ask hon. Gentlemen not to interject remarks, and to let the Chancellor of the Exchequer answer the question.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

A question has been put to me, and I must be allowed to answer it. If the answer is ridiculous, then hon. Gentlemen opposite will be perfectly entitled to their laugh. The question put to me is this: What would happen if there were a Home Rule Parliament in being at the present moment? Would I introduce the Budget in the present form, or what would happen if the extra 2d. were put on the Income Tax in Ireland? I say that it depends on the object for which you raise it. If you are raising it for a purpose which is an Imperial one, Ireland would contribute just like the rest of the United Kingdom. That is exactly what I said. This is not a new answer. I gave exactly the same answer in 1912, when I presupposed exactly the conditions which have arisen now. The two conditions I presupposed then were, first of all, the raising of money for Imperial purposes, and, secondly, the raising of it for the purposes of social reform. Those are exactly the conditions of the present Budget. If you are going to raise money out of Ireland, then you must treat Ireland like the rest of the United Kingdom in the distribution of the fund. That is exactly what we are doing, and we should have done it whether the Home Rule Bill was through or whether it was not.

May I now be permitted to answer the hon. and learned Member for Cork? The hon. and learned Member has made his usual attack on the Treasury with his usual inaccuracy, and what makes it rather worse this time is that he has repeated the inaccuracy to which his attention was before called. What is the statement he makes? He says that our forecast of revenue which we have raised from Ireland under the 1909 Budget was £438,000. As a matter of fact, we raised £1,800,000. The latter figure is grotesquely inaccurate, but let us take the £438,000. The hon. Gentleman says that that statement was made in the White Paper we issued. It was not made. The statement made in the White Paper was that in the year 1909–10 that was the amount raised, but, as he knows very well, in that year the Whisky Duty, so far from producing any tax, was a great loss. What was our forecast of the future? In the very same Paper it was £602,000, but with this note: "Exclusive of spirits, liquor licences, and Land Value Duties." Why did not the hon. and learned Gentleman tell the House that?

Mr. T. M. HEALY

Because the statement of £400,000 was stated by the hon. Member for Mayo to be a treaty with the Irish people signed by four Cabinet Ministers.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

The hon. and learned Member says the statement was in the White Paper. That is not true. He knows that spirits are a very substantial contribution to that amount. He suppresses that, and he is the Gentleman who talks about Ministers "telling more falsehoods."

Mr. T. M. HEALY

The statement in the White Paper was backed by four Cabinet Ministers, who repeated it in Debate.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I must pin the hon. and learned Member to his statement. He says that in the White Paper, which had been signed, countersigned, and sub-signed by three or four Ministers, that statement was made. It is not true.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

It is true.

7.0 P.M.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

I have the White Paper in front of me, and what the White Paper says is, it would produce £600,000, without spirits, liquor licences, and Land Value Duties. The hon. and learned Gentleman has been told that before, and he deliberately repeats the statement for consumption in Ireland. The hon. and learned Gentleman also made a very savage attack upon the contribution for the police. He said the police were practically soldiers in Ireland. The whole, point is this: The police are maintained exclusively, except the Dublin police, out of Imperial funds. He says, "Here is a sum of money for relieving the rates in respect of police and education." Not a penny comes from Ireland for the maintenance of the police, except Dublin, where there is a small contribution. How are you to contribute to the relief of rates that do not exist? The same thing applies to education. There are no education rates in Ireland. The hon. and learned Member knows perfectly well that out of this Budget Ireland is getting a surplus fund of over £300,000. May I ask would he like Ireland to be out of the taxes and out of the contribution? Would he stand up here and say, "Leave Ireland out of your Budget altogether?" He has held me up to obloquy in Ireland as the cruellest and meanest Chancellor of the Exchequer. Let me tell him what the facts are with regard to Ireland. Before I came to the Exchequer—and this is a matter for denunciation by British Members—Ireland was contributing out of her revenue £1,800,000 for Imperial purposes. Now it is the other way about, and Ireland, on the contrary, is gaming about £2,000,000. That is the mean, hard, cruel Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Sir E. CARSON

Ireland is gaining £2,000,000?

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

Ireland is gaining £2,000,000 instead of contributing £1,800,000. That is the action of what the hon. and learned Member calls a hard, cruel Chancellor of the Exchequer. He would like to go back to the great Goschen days. [An HON. MEMBER: "We all should!"] Well, that you will never do. Let us have, he says, the great Goschen days, when Ireland was contributing £2,677,000 towards Imperial purposes. Those are the great days which he wants. Mr. Lloyd George is making a demand which gives Ireland £2,000,000. Away with it. With every Tory in the United Kingdom he would go back to the great Goschen days that took nearly £3,000,000 out of Ireland. Let him tell that story to the people of Ireland. Let there be no old age pensions; wipe them all out. That is his policy. And he backs that up by repeatedly suppressing facts which, if he has forgotten them, have been, at any rate, repeatedly brought to his memory. I bring them once more to his memory, but that will not prevent him continuing to suppress them.

Sir F. BANBURY

I beg to move, to add to paragraph (c) of the Resolution, the words, "Provided that the payments in connection with all Irish services, whether reserved or not, shall not involve any charge upon the British taxpayer."

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down began his speech by asking the hon. Member for St. Pancras what he thought he would gain by obtaining this discussion this afternoon, and told him that he would have an opportunity of discussing the question later on. But I may point out to the right hon. Gentleman that what we wanted was a discussion now, before the Third Beading of the Home Rule Bill, so that the country should know exactly what the cost of giving separation to Ireland was going to be. There will be no use in discussing this aspect upon the Finance Bill. What we want to show now is that the operation of this Resolution will be to increase largely the loss of the British taxpayer and make it greater than was anticipated a year ago. In answer to a question addressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Worcestershire, the righthon. Gentleman defended his placing additional taxation upon Ireland on the ground that he had stated in 1912–13 that in the case of a great national emergency he must put additional taxation on Ireland for the purposes of the Army and the Navy and the Imperial Budget. My right hon. Friend pointed out that part of this new taxation was to be used for the deficit which exists in the Navy, and he asked the right hon. Gentleman what amount Ireland was going to contri- bute to that deficit. That was a very pertinent question which the right hon. Gentleman, with his usual ingenuity, never answered.

The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that the question was asked, and he knows just as well as I do why he did not answer it. He did not answer it for this reason: That not a single farthing of that new taxation placed upon Ireland is going to be devoted to Imperial purposes. I quite admit that the whole of it should not go to Imperial purposes, but only that proportion that is devoted to the same purpose in England. But no proportion at all is going, and not only that, but what the right hon. Gentleman is going to do is to take £400,000 from the Irish taxpayer, and to return to them £767,000. Therefore, not only is he not going to take a single farthing for Imperial purposes, but he is going to take from the pockets of the English taxpayer £370,000, and hand it over to the Irish taxpayer. That is a plain statement of fact which I challenge him to deny. The right hon. Gentleman has been very indignant with the hon. and learned Member for Cork for denouncing as incorrect the estimate which he made of the 1909–10 Budget. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman or the hon. and learned Gentleman is correct, and it does not affect my argument. The right hon. Gentleman has given many estimates of the yield of taxes which have turned out to be wrong. I do not attribute any motive to him. I merely state the fact.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE

No Chancellor of the Exchequer has ever been able to estimate quite accurately what every tax will produce. He takes the advice which is given to him on the point.

Sir F. BANBURY

I was not making any charge against the right hon. Gentleman. I was merely stating that on several occasions he made estimates which have turned out to be incorrect. How does he know that his estimate of a yield of £400,000 from the new taxes in Ireland is going to be realised? The taxation takes the form of Death Duties, Super-tax, and increased Income Tax. We are told that Ireland is a poor country. Is it not extremely likely that these taxes will not yield anything like as much as that? They are taxes which are put on rich people. The increase in Death Duties only affects very large estates. There is no increase on the small estates, and the same is the case with regard to income. Therefore, if Ireland is a poor country, and the incomes and the estates are not large, then it is quite possible that the right hon. Gentleman will not get the amount which he thinks he is going to get from large estates and large incomes, and the fact remains that we maybe giving a great deal more to Ireland even than the right hon. Gentleman estimates. This Resolution was first amended by the House of Commons. Then a new Resolution was brought in which was in different terms, and fixed the amount which was going to be allowed to Ireland at a sum to be calculated at the time of the passing of the Bill. My hon. Friend alluded to that because the right hon. Gentleman rather tried to make out that the sum is to be calculated at the date of the Bill coming into operation. But that is not in Clause 14, and neither is it in the Resolution. It is that the sum is to be a fixed sum calculated upon the expense of the administration of Ireland at the passing of the Bill. What would happen if the Bill had passed last week, had gone through this House a little earlier than was anticipated, and had become law automatically in another place? This new proposal would not have come in because it would not at the time of the passing of the Bill have been an Irish service. Therefore, what the right hon. Gentleman is doing is to amend the finance of the Irish Home Rule Bill and to amend this Resolution, not by an alteration of the Resolution, but by another Bill to be brought in later on, which is a very dangerous precedent.

I moved a limiting Resolution in November, 1912, which was carried. That Resolution was afterwards defeated as a whole, and a new Resolution was brought in. I moved another Amendment to that new Resolution, which, unfortunately, was not carried. It was an Amendment to this effect, that the English taxpayers should not be compelled to contribute for the disadvantage, as I think, or the advantage, as hon. Gentlemen opposite think, of losing Ireland. Now it is shown that it is absolutely necessary that some such limiting Resolution as that should be passed, and the Debate which we have had this afternoon shows still more strongly that absolute necessity. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, who rather evaded a somewhat similar question by my right hon. Friend, if he can amend the Home Rule Bill by an operation in the Finance Bill of this year, to be passed either before the passing of the Home Rule Bill or after? What is to prevent him, should the Bill become law, further amending it in years to come, and what is to prevent the English taxpayer paying not £2,700,000, as he has to pay at the present moment, but considerably more for the privilege of losing control over Ireland? Unless an Amendment such as I propose is carried, that will be the position. The "Times." newspaper, in a leading article published in the autumn of last year, alluded to a proposal which had been made to the effect that there was nothing to prevent the Chancellor of the Exchequer or any English Government giving any further increase to Ireland that he might choose. Therefore, any idea that it will be cutting the loss, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Worcestershire said, and as I believe a very large number of people in the country believe, is absolutely false. When I moved my Amendment in November, 1912, I made a quotation from a speech of which the hon. and learned Member for Waterford made at York a few days before, in which he said that Ireland would pay her way and did not want any money from England. How can he reconcile that speech with the speech made by his hon. Friend the embryo Chancellor of the Exchequer last year, and to which great weight should be attached? I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not accept the Amendment, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Worcestershire said, what is the use of moving an Amendment now; it is perfectly useless because it could not be put in the Bill, and there is no opportunity of amending the Bill at the Committee stage. That is quite true, and that is the position into which this House is brought by the operation of the Parliament Act. In addition, there is the fact that if this Amendment were carried it would actually kill the Home Rule Bill, though I think that would not be a bad result. I should like to recall to hon. Gentlemen opposite the fact that under the Home Rule Bill of 1886 it was provided that a sum of £1,700,000 was to be contributed by Ireland to England, and that we were not to pay anything to Ireland. By the Bill of 1893 it was proposed that the whole of the Customs Duties should be transferred from Ireland to England; and a further proposal was that one-third of the gross Irish revenue, plus Ireland's share of miscellaneous revenue, should go to the United Kingdom. We have reversed all that. We were originally told only last year that the deficit would only be £2,000,000, and then that it was £1,500,000, and that £500,000 would put them on their legs. Now we are told that the deficit is £2,700,000, and we learn from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that in the Finance Bill he may introduce taxation on England and take part of that taxation to make a present of it to Ireland. That is what is actually happening now; that is a clear and absolute precedent, without any restriction whatever as to the way in which the money is to be spent. Whether it is to be spent on social reform, or whatever it may be, I have never been able to find out. But it is absurd, for it is going to be handed over to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Waterford to be spent on any objects he chooses, even on the payment of salaries to Members of the new House of Commons in Ireland. For all that the poor English taxpayer is to give up control over Ireland and has to pay—

Mr. PIRIE

And Scotland.

Sir F. BANBURY

The Scottish and English taxpayers.

Mr. PIRIE

That is better still.

Sir F. BANBURY

Then I hope I may have the assistance of the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. PIRIE

You will.

Sir F. BANBURY

Because the Scotch do not like to pay unless there is something in return. We in England are not so particular. I do not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Cork in what he said, that Ireland has paid John Bull, and I have the unpleasant feeling that the hon. Member's hand is in my pocket at the present moment, and that he wants to take some of the new taxation out of my pocket to carry away with him when he goes to the Home Rule House of Commons in Ireland. I want the support of the hon. Member for Aberdeen.

Mr. PIRIE

I did it before, and I shall again.

Sir F. BANBURY

I am very glad to hear it; I have hopes of Scotland still. I hope that the country will take notice that what we are going to do is to enable the forty-two Members from Ireland to come down to this House, and if there is a squeezable Chancellor of the Exchequer who wants to have forty-two votes, he will be able to bring in a Finance Bill to take money out of the pockets of the Scottish and English taxpayers, and offer it to the Irish Members, in order to obtain those forty-two votes which will come to what is called the Imperial House of Commons. In order to prevent that, I move the Limiting Resolution, which, I think, ought to obtain the support of everybody in this House. I believe that even a large number of hon. Members opposite do not believe in giving a blank cheque to the right hon. Gentleman, and in his own words, which he used just before he sat down, I say, "Away with Lloyd George finance"; and this Amendment would do away with Lloyd George finance.

The CHAIRMAN

The hon. Baronet stated that he moved this Amendment in 1912, and perhaps he will recollect that, at that time I was very doubtful about its being in order, and I so expressed myself. I suppose, however, that, having allowed it then, I must give him the benefit of the doubt on this occasion also.

Sir E. CARSON

It was your own ruling, Sir, as a matter of fact.

The CHAIRMAN

Yes; but I stated that the Amendment was very like a negative of the whole question. However, I am not going to quarrel about it on the present occasion.

Mr. LOUGH

The hon. Baronet has been encouraged to move his Amendment, remembering the success he had with one he previously moved. So far as I can see, the Amendment does not carry us one step further than if hon. Members chose to vote against the present Resolution. I hope that in the discussion of the Amendment we will not be confined very strictly to it, because so far as I can see the discussion this afternoon has been rather irrelevant to the Motion proposed from the Chair. The hon. and learned Member for St. Pancras discussed questions connected with the Budget and the Home Rule Bill that are not embodied in the Resolution at all, nor are they in the Amendment of the hon. Baronet opposite.

The CHAIRMAN

May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the occasion for this Debate arose out of a request which had been made in view of the new Budget proposals, and therefore I think I should have been very wrong if I had attempted to deprive the Committee of the opportunity to consider how this Resolution was affected by other proposals which had already been announced to the House. That is why I allowed the discussion. The right hon. Gentleman is quite correct when he says that the Amendment proposed by the hon. Baronet, being practically a negative, does not limit the discussion.

Mr. LOUGH

I hope you do not assume, Sir, that I am making any reflection on your ruling earlier in the day as to the general Debate. I only say that it is a pity that the discussion took the broad range which it did. This question has already been discussed, and after the lapse of a year a great deal has come to light, and the scheme is a great deal better today than when it was originally proposed. The White Paper which has been circulated begins by telling the effect of what has transpired since our last discussion. And what is the result? The Paper shows that the expenditure of Ireland has been £200,000 less than was estimated, and the revenue from Ireland has been about £220,000, so that under the Bill we are about half a million better off than was estimated when we were discussing the matter a year ago. The hon. and learned Member for St. Pancras entered upon the somewhat discursive discussion, but he knew the facts, and did not refer to the White Paper. The White Paper so far from justifying the hon. Baronet in moving the Amendment, shows that the proposals which this House assented to a year ago were watertight proposals, and, as a matter of fact, the charge upon the Exchequer has proved to be half a million less than was anticipated a year ago. Some large figures have been given by my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board, and I think they want a little justification.

When I look at the White Paper I see that the Estimate of the Irish deficit for last year was 1.8 million pounds, and the next statement is that the actual deficit is only 1.2 million pounds. It proves—and it is a remarkable fact—that the revenue of Ireland is increasing very fast. The hon. Member for Cork and others who severely criticise everything connected with the Budget, take the view that this proves that the burdens pressing on Ireland are very heavy. Undoubtedly they are, and they are always increasing, while we have got to bear in mind that the population is diminishing. What is the best way of getting out of the difficulty? Surely the best way is to adopt the financial proposals of the Home Rule Bill and give more control over these affairs to Irishmen themselves! With regard to the provisions in the Bill, I submit that once this measure is passed into law difficulties will be got over in Ireland, and she will get a fuller measure of financial control than at present. The facts of the past year show that such a result may be nearer than the sceptics who sit opposite think; and it is only by looking forward in a hopeful spirit—a spirit which is fully justified by the information disclosed in this White Paper—that we will see our way through these financial difficulties, which undoubtedly do press more and more severely on Ireland. What are the difficulties? The chief and great difficulty is that of a rich commercial country making constant demands on a rich exchequer, and spreading the burden over a poor agricultural island—while the population of this island is increasing in wealth, in number, and the population of the other is steadily diminishing. The hon. and learned Member for Cork denounced these proposals, but he did not make any constructive proposals in their place. He talked about the growing burdens, but he did not tell us what to do with regard to them. We all rejoice on this side of the House that we have brought before us a measure, the examination of which shows that its tendencies are good, that the thing has worked out right, and that we may hope that in future years Ireland will be in a still better position.

In this White Paper there is a very interesting comparison between the revenue as collected in Ireland and the revenue actually contributed. I would direct the attention of the Committee to one figure in that Estimate. It states that the Excise collected in Ireland amounts to 5.8 millions, whereas the Excise actually contributed by Ireland is only 3.4 millions, so that Ireland appears to contribute 2.4 millions more than she does. That disposes largely of one of the great fictions spread about amongst those who do not understand the matter with regard to Belfast. The figures of Excise and Customs which are collected in Belfast are quoted as proof of the great wealth of the community which lives there, and of the poverty of the rest of Ireland. The fact is that a great deal of the Excise Duty is paid in Belfast by the British people on whisky, and some of it of indifferent quality, which is afterwards sent to Great Britain, and that is the reason why those figures show an excess of 2.4 millions more than Ireland actually pays. A great deal of those supposed contributions of Belfast are purely fictitious. They are matters which this White Paper blows sky-high, and which shows that the burden is generally scattered fairly over Ireland. I think, on the whole, first the Government and my right hon. Friend here, and secondly, the Home Rulers may congratulate themselves very much on this Debate. We did not hear a word about the wickedness of allowing the Irish to control their own Customs, to the slight extent that is given in the Bill, and there has not been a word with regard to the provisions as to the Post Office, which would give Ireland some little control over that important branch of the public service, and probably effect great economies. None of the old hares have been started.

Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON

Give us more time.

Mr. LOUGH

You have had four or five hours. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Well, then, you have had three or four hours. It is wonderful what you could do in a little time if you had a sensible idea with regard to the matter, but in this case hon. Gentlemen did not exactly know what to say. They digressed to the Budget and to a Finance Bill which has not been laid before the House, and they asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer about a Clause that has not been drawn, and they painted a dark picture of the evils that will arise, but they did not submit a single fact or figure or strengthen any of the old arguments to show that anything that has been said from the Irish Benches or from these Benches in support of the financial system of the Bill was at fault. Even the hon. Baronet who goes back on one of his ridiculous amendments did not assail the provisions or did not say that he believed in any of the old arguments against the financial provisions of the Bill which are embodied in this Resolution. They know nothing against the principle of Home Rule which is in the Bill. I would say to Gentlemen who represent the South of Ireland that the figures do not signify. It is the principle on which the Bill is fixed that signifies. The principle gives Ireland for the first time control over its own affairs, and that principle has not been assailed in this Debate, and I think that we on this side of the House can support it with greater confidence than ever.

Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON

Like the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. I am afraid I have made a good many speeches about the finance of Home Rule. With regard to the statement he has just made as regards the figures on the White Paper, I think he has omitted to notice that in the previous White Paper he will find it is expressly stated there that the figures on that Paper are only estimates, and that in all probability, and, in fact, in all certainty, the ultimate figures would be found to be less than the Estimates. The Estimates are always in. excess of the ultimate figures, and that disposes of the point the right hon. Gentleman made at the beginning of his speech. He then went on to talk of the nature of the Debate which we had today. I confess from what occurred at the end of Question Time, I think this Debate-has been a very good commentary. At the end of Question Time we were told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it was quite unnecessary to see the Finance Bill before this Debate took place, because the whole matter had been explained in the space of about three minutes on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House, and that a full and complete statement had been made by the President of the Local Government Board. It took the President of the Local Government Board exactly an hour by the clock to-day to make a full and complete statement; and even now I do not think it can be described as full and complete, and yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer tried to persuade us that he had made it in three minutes previously. As a matter of fact I take the view, and I say it quite frankly, that the purpose of this Debate has been, if I may say so, rather ridiculous, because we are debating something which has not got any real existence, and which we now know never will have any real existence. We are debating the financial provisions as contained in the Government of Ireland-Bill, and we now know, whatever happens, that that is not going to be the finance which, even if the Government have their way, is ultimately going to be enacted.

It is going to be amended, we now know, in the first place, by the Finance Bill, and, whatever else happens, the right horn Gentleman has said himself to-day that in effect Clause 14 of the Bill is going to be amended in the forthcoming Finance Bill. Not only that, but the Prime Minister said that there is in the contemplation of the minds of the Government an amending Bill which is to deal with some phase of the question of Ulster, and which therefore inferentially must necessarily deal with the finance of this present Government of Ireland Bill, and which also, if we infer correctly from what the right hon. Gentleman said, is going to have something to do with regard to the Customs provision and possibly with regard to the Post Office. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington (Mr. Lough) was very anxious that some of us should say something about the Customs.

Mr. LOUGH

Not anxious.

Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON

I have only this to say. Since our recent Debates we have had the opportunity, which was denied us before until it was too late, of seeing the evidence upon which the Government secret Advisory Committee based their report. What do we find when we get that evidence on this very point of separate Customs? We find that the Government's own Under-Secretary (Sir James Dougherty) was called in to advise on the financial points, and that he said in the most explicit terms that he was totally unable to imagine a Government ever proposing to set up a separate Customs House for England and Ireland. That is one gleam of light upon the subject of a Customs House to which I think the right hon. Gentleman might well direct his attention. With regard to the new taxes and the new Grants, it is now plain for the first time, because it certainly was not plain from what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in 1912, that so far as England is concerned there really is no cutting of the loss under this Bill under your proposals. Whatever else you are going to do, you are not going to cut the loss, but you are setting an upward limit which will always be elastic, and in an upward direction as long as you are increasing your expenditure on social services in Great Britain. Then you turn round and say, that "in Ireland you are going to get more money and more Grants." I say to the right hon. Gentleman and of those of my hon. Friends who take that view that even from the Irish point of view it is a thoroughly vicious system, because, do not forget, we are to have this increased taxation levied upon Ireland.

It is true there are to be repayments, but that is not a very satisfactory system to adopt. It is feeding the pig with bits of its own tail, and it does not help the pig to give it something extra in addition, and ultimately it must end in disaster to the pig. The taxes then are drawn from one class of persons in Ireland, but the repayments are made to the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, and what security is there that they will ever reach the class from whom the money was originally drawn. I am perfectly certain they will not, and therefore I say you are doing a great injustice in that respect to the Irish taxpayer. I now come to the Irish ratepayer and the new Grants. No conditions, says the right hon. Gentleman, are to be attached to those new Grants. They are to be entirely at the will and disposition of the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer. I now ask him a question which I ventured to ask in an interruption a little earlier. You are going to take away from the province of Ulster Grants at present given to that province in relief of local taxation. What security has the province of Ulster got that it will get adequate repayment, or any repayment at all, out of the money which you give to the Chancellor of the Exchequer? There is no security. The right hon. Gentleman says, "Your security is your confidence in the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer," but I am sorry to say that is in our case a minus quantity. There is a good deal more which one might say, and there will probably be an opportunity of saying it on the Finance Bill.

I think there will be a great deal of surprise among many classes in Ireland at the statements which have been made on the part of the Government in to-day's Debate. I think, for instance, that the teaching profession of Ireland will be very much astonished to know that the £112,500 which is supposed to be earmarked for education is not so earmarked for education at all, but that it is going to be given to the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that not a brass halfpenny need be given for educational purposes in Ireland unless the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer so wills. That will be a very unpleasant surprise to many of the teaching community in Ireland. I only wish we had a little more time, but I think, so far as the Debate has gone, it has elicited some curious and novel facts, even after this lapse of time and of all these Debates. The only moral which I draw is this: That there is no finality in your finance, that there never will be or can be under the provisions of this Bill any of that finality in finance which was the chief justification, if not your sole justification, for the original introduction of your proposals.

Mr. NEWMAN

There is a story going round Dublin that a well-known Irishman, when asked if he was going to be the first Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, "No, I am not, because the first Chancellor will certainly be assassinated; though," he added, "I may be Chancellor later on." I do not know if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington (Mr. Lough) is going to be the first Chancellor, and if the hon. Member for North Dublin (Mr. Clancy) will take his place. We do know this, however, that for many months before there is an Irish Exchequer at all, there is going to be a sort of locum tenens for the Irish Chancellor in the person of the Chief Secretary, who was going to act during the interregnum through the President of the Local Government Board. For the past two years we have had an imaginary balance-sheet of the Irish Exchequer drawn up, and each time we have had a surplus of £500,000, which is the wedding gift from England to her dutiful loving daughter, Ireland, on that daughter setting up housekeeping for herself. Take this imaginary balance-sheet. On the expenditure side is the payment to the local taxation account of £1,500,000. I am glad to have ascertained from the President of the Local Government Board to-day that this is a stereotyped sum. We have been told that to that sum will be added a further stereotyped sum of about £700,000. Therefore, instead of the comparatively exiguous wedding gift of £500,000, we have an additional undiminishing gift of £700,000, making a total of £1,200,000 to carry on with. I am an Irishman, and if the locum tenens Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer is willing to throw into the lap of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford this extra sum of money, I am not going to look that gift-horse in the mouth. If the right hon. Gentleman will tell me honestly that this money is really coming to the relief of the Irish Super-tax payer and the Irish payer of Estate Duties, I certainly am not going into the Lobby against it.

The right hon. Gentleman told us on a former occasion that there was one thing even more important than Home Rule, and that was the question of Irish land purchase. Here is his chance. There he sits, the last of his line, the last Irish Chief Secretary. Let him go out in full glory, and hand down his name in Irish history for evermore. Let him with this money which he has obtained from the Imperial Exchequer finish up Irish land purchase. With half £700,000, he could easily finish the finance of that transaction. I know what will be said. Hon. Members opposite will say that if he did that he would merely be putting so much money into the pockets of Irish landlords, putting up the price of land, and so forth. But we, the payers of Irish Super-tax and so on, contribute £400,000 to this sum; therefore, if this money is used to finish up the finance of Irish land purchase, we shall largely be paying it ourselves. I appeal to the Chief Secretary not to waste the money. Here he has a windfall from the English Chancellor of the Exchequer—a windfall such as no Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer will ever get again. Let him seize the opportunity. He has got the money; let him finish up land purchase and do the thing that Ireland wants next to Home Rule. If he will do that I will gladly support him in the Lobby in a few minutes.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

The hon. Member for Enfield (Mr. Newman) seems to accept as gospel all the figures given from the Treasury Bench. He is quite satisfied that we are going to pay £450,000 under this Budget and get £769,000. It is exceedingly probable that we may get £769,000, but I do not believe one word of the story about the £450,000.

Mr. NEWMAN

Nor do I.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

I am glad to hear it. The hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) is quite satisfied that England is going to be badly "had" by the financial proposal which has been explained to-night. He says that the taxes which come under the new Budget are to arise from Death Duties and Super-tax; that those taxes affect rich men; that Ireland is a poor country; that therefore the strong probability is that the estimate of £450,000 will be falsified; and that instead of losing £200,000 or £300,000, as the President of the Local Government Board estimates, England will lose a much larger sum. I agree with the hon. Baronet in his profound distrust of tine Estimates. The Estimates will be wrong, but not in the way that he anticipates. I can give a convincing ground for that belief. The Supertax was proposed in the Budget 1909–10, and in a White Paper issued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer there was an estimate of what the Super-tax would yield in Ireland. That estimate put the yield, when it had reached its ultimate extent, at £60,000. The yield for the year before last was £120,000. We have not the figure for last year, but it was certainly more. Accordingly, when the Treasury officials make an estimate on this occasion, I agree that it will probably be inaccurate, but not in the way that the hon. Baronet anticipates. That was not the only figure in the White Paper, and every other figure was similarly inaccurate. My hon. Friend was criticised because he referred to the sum of £450,000. The President of the Local Government Board repeated that figure in the House, and told us that we ought to be thankful that we were making such a good bargain. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that his words are on record; they were noted by the recording angel. Therefore, the £450,000 does not exist merely in the imagination of my hon. Friend; it is in the OFFICIAL REPORT in formal statements from the Treasury Bench by several Cabinet Ministers.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

was understood to ask: Will the hon. and learned Member give the reference?

8.0 P.M.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

I will, with pleasure. That is not the only delusion under which hon. Members have laboured when discussing this question. They have spoken as if Ireland, by virtue of this proposal, was to get £769,000 extra to do what she likes with. Nothing of the kind. She will not get one additional penny to do what she likes with. It is quite true that there will be nothing in the Home Rule Bill compelling the Irish Parliament to dispose of this £769,000 in any particular way. There will be no mention of £769,000. There will be simply one lump transferred sum, with which no doubt the Irish Parliament will be able to do what it likes. That is the position on paper. That is in theory what the Irish Parliament will be able to do. But what are the facts? The right hon. Gentleman read out to-night the purposes for which these sums are to be allocated. He said there would be a year before the Home Rule Bill came into force, and that therefore the Finance Bill would contain a formal allocation of this money for that year. Take the sum for increasing the salaries of Post Office officials. Does anyone suppose that it will be within the power of the Irish Parliament to take away from the Post Office officials the money that will be formally allocated ta them by Parliament? It will be impossible. It is perfectly plain that once the House of Commons formally earmarks-these sums for one year, they will be earmarked for all time. The right hon. Gentleman says that the Irish House of Commons will act reasonably, and that they will not take advantage of the date of the Home Rule Bill to take away from the Post Office servants the money which has been allocated to them. What they will not do to the Post Office officials, the Irish Parliament will certainly not do to the various other Services for which this money will be formally ear-marked by the Finance Bill for this particular year. Therefore, the pretence that the Irish Parliament will have a single penny extra to dispose of in consequence of the Budget of this year is a pure myth: and the theory that the Irish Parliament will put its hands into the pockets of the Post Office employés, or any other branch of the Irish Service, to take out of those pockets what the English Treasury has already put into them, is the merest moonshine and nonsense. Accordingly, when we are dealing with the figures given to us by the Treasury, we are profoundly distrustful of them. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that there is going to be a deficit next year of £2,200,000. That, of course, includes what the hon. Member above the Gangway referred to, the £500,000. I do not believe one word of this story of a deficit of £2,200,000. In proof that my scepticism is justified, let us for one moment look at previous alleged deficits. This story of deficits begun with the Primrose Commission and on the evidence of Treasury officials. The Primrose Report told us that there would be a deficit for 1909–10 of more than £1,000,000. The fact was that there was a surplus of £163,000. The same Treasury Report, on the same evidence of Treasury officials, told us that in 1911–12 there would be a deficit of £1,500,000. The deficit was, in fact, £845,000. Last year, when one would have supposed that experience would have made those concerned a little chary of prophecy, the Treasury vouched for the figures in a White Paper of an estimated deficit for 1913–14 of £1,706,000. Four days ago the right hon. Gentleman circulated a White Paper showing that this estimate was false to the extent of no less than half a million. There was an estimated deficit of £1,706,000, and the actual deficit was £1,275,000. If that is the value to be attached to Treasury estimates of deficits, how can we possibly believe that there is to be a deficit next year of £2,200,000? If the Treasury were wrong last year, and the year before that, and the year before that again, generally to the extent of at least 00 per cent., how are they to be believed in this present year of grace? I do not believe one word of these stories of deficits, and I therefore tell the right hon. Gentleman that he may sleep peacefully and without any anticipation that these disasters of finance are likely to happen. One word more, and that is to ask the right hon. Gentleman the President

of the Local Government Board if he will explain a figure to us. On the Adjournment on Monday night he gave the figure for the expenditure in Ireland arising out of the Budget at £3697,500. To-night I understand he has put it at £767,000. That is a difference of nearly £70,000. I do not understand it, and I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to explain.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

That figure includes a Grant of £65,000 for insurance, and £1,500 for collection of duties.

Question put, "That those words be there inserted."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 213; Noes, 305.

Division No. 113.]	AYES.	[8.5 p.m.
Agg-Gardner, James Tynte	Denison-Pender, J. C.	Keswick, Henry
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Denniss, E. R. B.	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement
Anson, Rt. Hon. Sir William R.	Dixon, C. H.	Kyffin-Taylor, G.
Anstruther-Gray, Major William	Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Lane-Fox, G. R.
Archer-Shee, Major Martin	Duke, Henry Edward	Larmor, Sir J.
Ashley, Wilfrid W.	Du Pre, W. Baring	Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle)
Astor, Waldorf	Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)
Baird, John Lawrence	Faber, George Denison (Clapham)	Lewisham, Viscount
Banner, Sir John S. Harmood-	Faber, Captain W. V. (Hants, W.)	Lloyd, George Ambrose (Stafford, W.)
Baring, Major Hon. Guy V. (Winchester)	Falle, Bertram Godfray	Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)
Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)	Fell, Arthur	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)
Barnston, Harry	Finlay, Rt. Hon. Sir Robert	Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)
Barrie, H. T.	Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lieut.-Colonel A. R.
Bathurst, Hon. A. B. (Glouc., F.)	Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.	Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston)
Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)	Foster, Philip Staveley	Lyttelton, Hon. J. C.
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Gardner, Ernest	MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Gastrell, Major W. Houghton	Mackinder, Halford J.
Benn, Ion Hamilton (Greenwich)	Gibbs, G. A.	M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)
Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish-	Gilmour, Captain John	Magnus, Sir Philip
Beresford, Lord Charles	Glazebrook, Captain Philip K.	Malcolm, Ian
Bigland, Alfred	Goldman, C. S.	Mason, James F. (Windsor)
Bird, Alfred	Gordon, John (Londonderry, South)	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.
Blair, Reginald	Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Middlemore, John Throgmorton
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-	Goulding, Edward Alfred	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid)	Grant, J. A.	Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas
Boyton, James	Greene, W. R.	Morrison-Bell, Major A. C. (Honiton)
Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell	Gretton, John	Mount, William Arthur
Bridgeman, William Clive	Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S. E.)	Newdegate, F. A.
Burdett-Coutts, W.	Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)	Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)
Burn, Colonel C. R.	Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne)	Nield, Herbert
Butcher, John George	Haddock, George Bahr	O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, M'd)
Campbell, Captain Duncan F. (Ayr, N.)	Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight)	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.
Campion, W. R.	Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)	Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Hamersley, Alfred St. George	Paget, Almeric Hugh
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.	Hamilton, C. G. C. (Ches., Altrincham)	Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)
Cassel, Felix	Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington, S.)	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Cator, John	Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence	Perkins, Walter F.
Cautley, H. S.	Harris, Henry Percy	Pirie, Duncan V.
Cave, George	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Pole-Carew, Sir R.
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon)	Pretyman, Ernest George
Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University)	Henderson, Sir A. (St. Geo., Han. Sq.)	Pryce-Jones, Colonel E.
Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin)	Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.)	Quilter, Sir William Eley C.
Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.	Hibbert, Sir Henry F.	Randles, Sir John S.
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worcs., E.)	Hills, John Waller	Ratcliff, R. F.
Chambers, J.	Hill-Wood, Samuel	Rawson, Colonel R. H.
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Hoare, Samuel John Gurney	Rees, Sir J. D.
Clive, Captain Percy Archer	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Remnant, James Farquharson
Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham	Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Courthope, George Loyd	Horner, Andrew Long	Rolleston, Sir John
Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)	Houston, Robert Paterson	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	Hunt, Rowland	Royds, Edmund
Craik, Sir Henry	Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk.	Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)
Crichton-Stuart, Lord Ninian	Ingleby, Holcombe	Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby)
Croft, H. P.	Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, East)	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Currie, George W.	Jessel, Captain H. M.	Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood)
Dalrymple, Viscount	Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr	Samuel, Samuel (Wandsworth)
Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)	Kerry, Earl of	Sanderson, Lancelot
Sassoon, Sir Philip	Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)	Wilson, A. Stanley (Yorks, E. R.)
Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)	Wilson, Captain Leslie O. (Reading)
Sharman-Crawford, Colonel R. G.	Thynne, Lord Alexander	Winterton, Earl
Smith, Harold (Warrington)	Tickler, T. G.	Wolmer, Viscount
Spear, Sir John Ward	Tobin, Alfred Aspinall	Wood, Hon. E. F. L. (Yorks, Ripon)
Stanier, Beville	Touche, George Alexander	Wood, John (Staiybridge)
Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)	Tryon, Captain George Clement	Worthington Evans, L.
Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)	Valentia, Viscount	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Starkey, John R.	Wairond, Hon. Lionel	Wright, Henry Fitzherbert
Staveley-Hill, Henry	Warde, Colonel C. E. (Kent, Mid)	Yate, Colonel Charles Edward
Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)	Weston, Colonel J. W.	Yerburgh, Robert A.
Swift, Rigby	Wheler, Granville C. H.	Younger, Sir George
Talbot, Lord Edmund	White, Major G. D. (Lanes Southport)
Terrell, George (Wilts, N. W.)	Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Sir
Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)	Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud	F. Banbury and Mr. Hewins.
NOES.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Donelan, Captain A.	Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)
Abraham, Rt. Hon. William (Rhondda)	Doris, William	Jones, Leif (Notts, Rushcliffe)
Acland, Francis Dyke	Duffy, William J.	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)
Adamson, William	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)
Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D.	Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)	Jowett, Frederick William
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)	Joyce, Michael
Alden, Percy	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Kellaway, Frederick George
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire)	Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)	Kelly, Edward
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)	Elverston, Sir Harold	Kennedy, Vincent Paul
Arnold, Sydney	Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)	Kenyon, Barnet
Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)	Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)	Kilbride, Denis
Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.)	Essex, Sir Richard Walter	King, Joseph
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Esslemont, George Birnie	Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton)
Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)	Falconer, James	Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)
Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)	Farrell, James Patrick	Lardner, James C. R.
Barnes, George N.	Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles	Law, Hugh, A. (Donegal, West)
Beale, Sir William Phipson	Ffrench, Peter	Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th)
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Field, William	Levy, Sir Maurice
Beck, Arthur Cecil	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward	Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert
Benn, W. W. (T. Hamlets, St. George)	Fitzgibbon, John	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas
Bentham, George Jackson	Flavin, Michael Joseph	Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich)
Bethell, Sir J. H.	Fiance, Gerald Ashburrer	Lundon, Thomas
Birreil, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Furness, Sir Stephen Wilson	Lyell, Charles Henry
Black, Arthur W.	Gelder, Sir W. A.	Lynch, Arthur Alfred
Boland, John Pius	George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd	Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)
Booth, Frederick Handel	Gill, A. H.	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)
Bowerman, Charles W.	Gladstone, W. G. C.	McGhee, Richard
Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Glanville, H. J.	Maclean, Donald
Brace, William	Goldstone, Frank	Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.
Brady, Patrick Joseph	Greig, Colonel J. W.	MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Griffith, Ellis Jones	Macpherson, James Ian
Brunner, John F. L.	Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)	MacVeagh, Jeremiah
Bryce, J. Annan	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)	M'Callum, Sir John M.
Buckmaster, Sir Stanley O.	Hackett, John	M'Curdy, Charles Albert
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Hall, Frederick (Yorks, Normanton)	M'Kean, John
Byles, Sir William Pollard	Hancock, John George	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)	Harcourt, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Rossendale)	M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leicester)
Cawley, Harold T. (Lancs., Heywood)	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	M'Laren, Hon. F. W. S. (Lincs., Spalding)
Chancellor, Henry George	Hardie, J. Keir	M'Micking, Major Gilbert
Chapple, Dr. William Allen	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Luton, Beds)	Manfield, Harry
Clancy, John Joseph	Harvey, A. G. C (Rochdale)	Markham, Sir Arthur Basil
Clough, William	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Marks, Sir George Croydon
Clynes, John R.	Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry	Marshall, Arthur Harold
Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock)	Hayden, John Patrick	Martin, Joseph
Collins, Sir Stephen (Lambeth)	Hayward, Evan	Meagher, Michael
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Hazleton, Richard	Meshan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Meehan, Patrick J. (Queen's Co., Leix)
Cotton, William Francis	Henderson, John M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Middlebrook, William
Cowan, W. H.	Henry, Sir Charles	Millar, James Duncan
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Herbert, General Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Molloy, Michael
Crooks, William	Hewart, Gordon	Mond, Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred
Crumley, Patrick	Higham, John Sharp	Money, L. G. Chiozza
Cullman, John	Hinds, John	Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)	Hodge, John	Mooney, John J.
Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)	Hogge, James Myles	Morgan, George Hay
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Holmes, Daniel Turner	Morrell, Philip
Davies, Timothy (Lines., Louth)	Holt, Richard Durning	Morison, Hector
Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardiganshire)	Hope, John Deans (Haddington)	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Dawes, James Arthur	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Muldoon, John
De Forest, Baron	Hudson, Walter	Munro, Rt. Hon Robert
Delany, William	Hughes, Spencer Leigh	Murphy, Martin J.
Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas	John, Edward Thomas	Murray, Captain Hon. Arthur C.
Devlin, Joseph	Johnson, William	Needham, Christopher Thomas
Dewar, Sir J. A.	Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)	Nolan, Joseph
Dickinson, Rt. Hon. Willoughby H.	Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)	Norton, Captain Cecil W.
Dillon, John	Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard

Nuttall, Harry	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)	Thorne, William (West Ham)
O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)	Toulmin, Sir George
O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Richards, Thomas	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Richardson, Albion (Peckham)	Verney, Sir Harry
O'Doherty, Philip	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)	Walters, Sir John Tudor
O'Donnell, Thomas	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Walton, Sir Joseph
O'Dowd, John	Roberts, George H. (Norwich)	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)	Wardle, George J.
O'Malley, William	Robinson, Sidney	Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay T.
O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Roche, Augustine (Louth)	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
O'Shee, James John	Roe, Sir Thomas	Webb, H.
O'Sullivan, Timothy	Rowlands, James	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Palmer, Godfrey Mark	Rowntree, Arnold	White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)
Parker, James (Halifax)	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.	White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E. R.)
Parry, Thomas H.	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Scanlan, Thomas	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Scott, A MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)	Whyte, Alexander F. (Perth)
Pearson, Hon. Weetman H. M.	Sheehy, David	Wiles, Thomas
Philipps, Colonel Ivor (Southampton)	Sherwell, Arthur James	Wilkie, Alexander
Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Shortt, Edward	Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N. W.)
Pointer, Joseph	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook	Williams, John (Glamorgan)
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)	Williams, Liewelyn (Carmarthen)
Pratt, J. W.	Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton)	Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)
Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)	Williamson, Sir Archibald
Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	Snowden, Philip	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)	Soames, Arthur Wellesley	Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.)
Priestley, Sir W. E. (Bradford, E.)	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Primrose, Hon. Neil James	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)	Winfrey, Sir Richard
Pringle, William M. R.	Sutherland, John E.	Yeo, Alfred William
Radford, George Heynes	Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Young, Samuel (Cavan, East)
Raffan, Peter Wilson	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Young, William (Perthshire, East)
Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Tennant, Harold John	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.
Reddy, Michael	Thomas, J. H.	Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.
Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

Main Question put.

The Committee divided: Ayes, 303; Noes, 215.

Division No. 114.]	AYES.	[8.15 p.m.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Clough, William	Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles
Abraham, Rt. Hon. William (Rhondda)	Clynes, John R.	Ffrench, Peter
Acland, Francis Dyke	Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock)	Field, William
Adamson, William	Collins, Sir Stephen (Lambeth)	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward
Adkins, Sir W. Ryland D.	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Fitzgibbon, John
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Flavin, Michael Joseph
Alden, Percy	Cotton, William Francis	France, G. A.
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire)	Cowan, W. H.	Furness, Sir Stephen Wilson
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Gelder, Sir William Alfred
Arnold Sydney	Crooks, William	George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd
Baker, H. T. (Accrington)	Crumley, Patrick	Gill, Alfred Henry
Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.)	Cullinan, John	Gladstone, W. G. C.
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)	Glanville, Harold James
Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)	Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)	Goldstone, Frank
Barnes, George N.	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Greig, Colonel J. W.
Beale, Sir William Phipson	Davies, Timothy (Lines., Louth)	Griffith, Ellis Jones
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)	Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)
Beck, Arthur Cecil	Dawes, James Arthur	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)
Benn, W. W. (T Hamlets, St. George)	De Forest, Baron	Hackett, John
Bentham, G. J.	Delany, William	Hall, Frederick (Yorks, Normanton)
Bethell, Sir John Henry	Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas	Hancock, J. G.
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Devlin, Joseph	Harcourt, Pt. Hon. H. L. (Rossendale)
Black, Arthur W.	Dewar, Sir J. A.	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)
Boland, John Pius	Dickinson, Rt. Hon. Willoughby H.	Hardie, J. Keir
Booth, Frederick Handel	Dillon, John	Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)
Bowerman, Charles W.	Donelan, Captain A.	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)
Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Doris, William	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)
Brace, William	Duffy, William J.	Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry
Brady, Patrick Joseph	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	Hayden, John Patrick
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Duncan, I. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)	Hay ward, Evan
Brunner, John F. L.	Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)	Hazleton, Richard
Bryce, J. Annan	Edwards Sir Francis (Radnor)	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)
Buckmaster, Sir Stanley O.	Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Elverston, Sir Harold	Henry, Sir Charles
Byles, Sir William Pollard	Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)	Herbert, General Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)
Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)	Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)	Hewart, Gordon
Cawley, Harold T. (Lancs., Heywood)	Essex, Sir Richard Walter	Higham, John Sharp
Chancellor, Henry George	Esslemont, George Birnie	Hinds, John
Chapple, Dr. William Allen	Falconer, James	Hodge, John
Clancy, John Joseph	Farrell, James Patrick	Hogge, James Myles
Holmes, Daniel Turner	Montagu, Hon. E. S.	Roche, Augustine (Louth)
Holt, Richard Durning	Mooney, John J.	Roe, Sir Thomas
Hope, John Deans (Haddington)	Morgan, George Hay	Rowlands, James
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Morrell, Philip	Rowntree, Arnold
Hudson, Walter	Morison, Hector	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.
Hughes, Spencer Leigh	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)
John, Edward Thomas	Muldoon, John	Scanlan, Thomas
Johnson, W.	Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)
Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)	Murphy, Martin J.	Sheehy, David
Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)	Murray, Captain Hon. Arthur C.	Sherwell, Arthur James
Jones, Henry Hayden (Merioneth)	Needham, Christopher Thomas	Shortt, Edward
Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)	Nolan, Joseph	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook
Jones, Leif (Notts, Rushcliffe)	Norton, Captain Cecil W.	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)
Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton)
Jones, W. S. Glyn- (T. H'mts., Stepney)	Nuttall, Harry	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Jowett, Frederick William	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Snowden, P.
Joyce, Michael	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Kellaway, Frederick George	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert
Kelly, Edward	O'Doherty, Philip	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)
Kennedy, Vincent Paul	O'Donnell, Thomas	Sutherland, John E.
Kenyon, Barnet	O'Dowd, John	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Kilbride, Denis	O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
King, Joseph	O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)
Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton)	O'Malley, William	Tennant, Harold John
Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)	O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)	Thomas, J. H.
Lardner, James C. R.	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)	O'Shee, James John	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th)	O'Sullivan, Timothy	Toulmin, Sir George
Levy, Sir Maurice	Palmer, Godfrey Mark	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert	Parker, James (Halifax)	Verney, Sir Harry
Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich)	Parry, Thomas H.	Walters, Sir John Tudor
Lundon, Thomas	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)	Walton, Sir Joseph
Lyell, Charles Henry	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Lynch, Arthur Alfred	Pearson, Hon. Weetman H. M.	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)	Philipps, Colonel Ivor (Southampton)	Wardle, George J.
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay T.
McGhee, Richard	Pointer, Joseph	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Maclean, Donald	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.	Pratt, J. W.	Webb, H.
MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)	Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Macpherson, James Ian	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)
MacVeagh, Jeremiah	Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)	White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E. R.)
M'Calium, Sir John M.	Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
M'Curdy, C. A.	Primrose, Hon. Neil James	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
M'Kean, John	Pringle, William M. R.	Whyte, Alexander F. (Perth)
McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Radford, George Heynes	Wiles, Thomas
M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.)	Raffan, Peter Wilson	Wilkie, Alexander
M'Laren, Hon. F. W. S. (Lincs., Spalding)	Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)	Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N. W.)
M'Micking, Major Gilbert	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Williams, John (Glamorgan)
Manfield, Harry	Reddy, Michael	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
Markham, Sir Arthur Basil	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)
Marks, Sir George Croydon	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)	Williamson, Sir Archibald
Marshall, Arthur Harold	Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Martin, J.	Richards, Thomas	Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.)
Meagher, Michael	Richardson, Albion (Peckham)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)	Winfrey, Sir Richard
Meehan, Patrick (J. Queen's Co., Leix)	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Yeo, Alfred William
Middlebrook, William	Roberts, George H. (Norwich)	Young, Samuel (Cavan, East)
Millar, James Duncan	Roberts, Sir J. Herbert (Denbighs)	Young, William (Perth, East)
Molloy, Michael	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)
Mond, Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred	Robinson, Sidney	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.
Money, L. G. Chiozza	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.
NOES.
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Beresford, Lord Charles	Cave, George
Anson, Rt. Hon. Sir William R.	Bigland, Alfred	Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)
Anstruther-Gray, Major William	Bird, A.	Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University)
Archer-Shee, Major M.	Blair, Reginald	Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin)
Ashley, Wilfrid W.	Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-	Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.
Astor, Waldorf	Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid)	Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r., E.)
Baird, John Lawrence	Boyton, James	Chambers, J.
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell	Clay, Captain H. H. Spender
Banner, Sir John S. Harmood-	Bridgeman, William Clive	Clive, Captain Percy Archer
Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester)	Burdett-Coutts, William	Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham
Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)	Burn, Colonel C. R.	Courthope, George Loyd
Barnston, Harry	Butcher, John George	Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)
Barrie, H. T.	Campbell, Captain Duncan F. (Ayr, N.)	Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)
Bathurst, Hon. A. B. (Glouc., E.)	Campion, W. R.	Craik, Sir Henry
Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)	Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Crichton-Stuart, Lord Ninian
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.	Croft, H. P.
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Cassel, Felix	Currie, George W.
Benn, Ion Hamilton (Greenwich)	Cator, John	Dalrymple, Viscount
Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish-	Cautley, H. S.	Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)

Denison-Pender, J. C.	Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, East)	Rothschild, Lionel de
Denniss, E. R. B.	Jessel, Captain H. M.	Royds, Edmund
Dixon, C. H.	Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr	Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)
Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Kerry, Earl of	Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby)
Duke, Henry Edward	Keswick, Henry	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Du Pre, W. Baring	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement	Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood)
Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Kyffin-Taylor, G.	Samuel, Samuel (Wandsworth)
Faber, George Denison (Clapham)	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Sanderson, Lancelot
Faber, Captain W. V. (Hants, W.)	Larmor, Sir J.	Sassoon, Sir Philip
Faile, Bertram Godfray	Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle)	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Fell, Arthur	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts, Mile End)	Sharman-Crawford, Colonel R. G.
Finlay, Rt. Hon. Sir Robert	Lewisham, Viscount	Smith, Harold (Warrington)
Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes	Lloyd, George Ambrose (Stafford, W.)	Spear, Sir John Ward
Fitzroy, Hon. E. A.	Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)	Stanier, Beville
Foster, Philip Staveley	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)	Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)
Gardner, Ernest	Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Gastrell, Major W. H.	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Colonel A. R.	Starkey, John Ralph
Gibbs, G. A.	Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston)	Staveley-Hill, Henry
Gilmour, Captain John	Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich)	Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)
Glazebrook, Captain Philip K.	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Swift, Rigby
Goldman, C. S.	Mackinder, H. J.	Terrell, George (Wilts, N. W.)
Gordon, John. (Londonderry, South)	M'Calmont, Major Robert C. A.	Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)
Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)	Thompson, Robert (Belfast, Nortir)
Goulding, Edward Alfred	Magnus, Sir Philip	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)
Grant, J. A.	Malcolm, Ian	Thynne, Lord A.
Greene, Walter Raymond	Mason, James (Windsor)	Tickler, T. G.
Gretton, John	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Tobin, Alfred Aspinall
Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S. E.)	Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Touche, George Alexander
Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Tryon, Captain George Clement
Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne)	Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas	Valentia, Viscount
Haddock, George Bahr	Morrison-Bell, Major A. C. (Honiton)	Walrond, Hon. Lionel
Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight)	Mount, William Arthur	Ward, Arnold S. (Herts, Watford)
Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)	Newdegate, F. A.	Warde, Colonel C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Hamersley, Alfred St. George	Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)	Weston, Colonel J. W.
Hamilton, C. G. C. (Ches., Altrincham)	Nield, Herbert	Wheler, Granville C. H.
Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington, S.)	O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid)	White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)
Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G A.	Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.)
Harris, Henry Percy	Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William	Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud
Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Paget, Almeric Hugh	Wilson, A. Stanley (Yorks, E. R.)
Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon)	Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)	Wilson, Captain Leslie O. (Reading)
Henderson, Sir A. (St. Geo., Han. Sq.)	Perkins, Walter Frank	Wilson, Maj. Sir M.(Bethnal Green, S. W.)
Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.)	Pirie, Duncan V.	Winterton, Earl
Hewins, William Albert Samuel	Pole-Carew, Sir R.	Wolmer, Viscount
Hibbert, Sir Henry F.	Pretyman, Ernest George	Wood, Hon. E. F. L. (Yorks, Ripon)
Hills, John Waller	Pryce-Jones, Colonel E.	Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Hill-Wood, Samuel	Quilter, Sir William Eley C.	Worthington Evans, L.
Hoare, Samuel John Gurney	Randles, Sir John S.	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Ratcliff, R. F.	Wright, Henry Fitzherbert
Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)	Rawson, Colonel Richard H.	Yate, Colonel C. E.
Horner, Andrew Long	Rees, Sir J. D.	Yerburgh, Robert A.
Houston, Robert Paterson	Remnant, James Farquharson
Hunt, Rowland	Roberts, S. (Sheffield. Ecclesall)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Lord
Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk.	Rolleston, Sir John	Edmund Talbot and Mr. Pike Pease.
Ingleby, Holcombe	Ronaldshay, Earl of

Question put, and agreed to.

Ordered, "That it is expedient, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the provisions for the Government of Ireland,—

To authorise the payment in each year out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom into the Irish Exchequer, or to any body or person in the stead of the Irish Exchequer,—

1. (a) of a fixed sum based on the cost, at the time of the passing of the said Act, of the branches of Government to be administered thereunder by the Irish Government and, in the ease of the future transfer of any other branches of Government to the Irish Government, of further sums based on the saving to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom resulting from the transfer; the 2050 amount of the said fixed sum and any such further sums to be determined in manner provided by the said Act, with power to make payments on account of those sums pending that determination; and
2. (b) of a sum of five hundred thousand pounds, diminishing in each year after the third year of payment by the sum of fifty thousand pounds until it is reduced to the sum of two hundred thousand pounds; and
3. (c) of sums equal to the proceeds of any taxes imposed by the Irish Parliament in pursuance to the powers given by the said Act, the amount of those proceeds to be determined in manner provided by the said Act:

And to authorise such Customs Duties to be charged on articles brought into Great Britain from Ireland, or into Ireland from Great Britain, and such alterations of drawbacks or allowances to be made in respect of those articles as may be provided for by the said Act in cases where any Customs or Excise Duty levied in Great Britain is levied at a different rate from that at which the duty is levied in Ireland, or where any Customs or Excise Duty is levied in Great Britain and not levied in Ireland, or levied in Ireland and not levied in Great Britain:

And to authorise the payment out of the Consolidated Fund, or out of moneys provided by Parliament, of any salaries, pensions, superannuation allowances, gratuities, or compensation, for the payment of which to or on behalf of any judges or Irish officers, or officers or constables of the Royal Irish Constabulary or of the Dublin Metropolitan police force, provision may be made in pursuance of the said Act; and also of any sums for the payment of which out of the Consolidated Fund, or out of moneys provided by Parliament, provision may be made by the said Act in the event of the failure of the Irish Government to make any such payment."