What has happened is very simple. The fulfilment of
treaty obligations required differential taxation, but administrative
convenience was best served by a uniform system of taxation. In the
struggle between the two, conscience was as usual defeated. The
Chancellor, according to the practice which has overridden the Act of
Union budgets for Great Britain, drags the schedule of taxes so fixed
through Ireland like a net, and counts the take. That, in the process,
the pledge of England should be broken, and her honour betrayed, is not
regarded by the best authorities as an objection or even as a relevant
fact. In the more sacred name of uniformity Ireland is swamped in the
Westminster Parliament like a fishing-smack in the wash of a great
merchantman.
But let one illusion be buried. If Ireland does not govern herself it is
quite certain that the British Parliament does not govern her. Changing
the venue of inquiry from London to Dublin we find ourselves still in
regions of the fantastic. From the sober and unemotional pages of
"Whitaker's Almanack" one learns, to begin with, that "the government of
Ireland is semi-independent.
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