much
less per head of the population there than in Great Britain. Such
conditions are highly suggestive of inelasticity. An Irish Chancellor of
the Exchequer will find no such fiscal reserves in direct taxes as does
his more fortunate British colleague. This conclusion should give pause
to those who think that if the Customs and Excise continued to be
controlled from Westminster, it would be still possible to extract the
larger revenue needed for the growing expenditure of Ireland by higher
rates of income tax and death duties. Such a course would increase the
burdens of the direct taxpayers of Ireland, but it would not fill the
Irish Treasury. On the other hand, it is clear that there is no chance
of relief being afforded to the Irish indirect taxpayer under Home Rule,
supposing Customs and Excise were handed over to the Irish Parliament.
Yet whenever a British Chancellor of the Exchequer has found it
necessary to increase any of the taxes on consumption, the protests from
the Irish benches have been invariably both loud and vehement. Irish
members have pointed to the low wages earned in Ireland, the greater
addiction of the people to tea and spirits, and the higher toll of their
earnings consequently extracted by the Exchequer. The yield of existing
taxes, therefore, whether direct or indirect, is not elastic in Ireland.
Neither of them afford sufficient resources to meet the necessities of
an Irish Parliament.

There are, of course, other reasons why there should be no delegation of
the power to impose Customs and Excise. The constitutional objections to
such a course are overwhelming. It would involve the abandonment of the
plea that Home Rule for Ireland was the prelude to Home Rule all round;
in other words, that separation was the condition precedent to
federalism. In every federal system in the world the control of Customs
and Excise has been retained by the central authority. This is true not
only of the quasi-federations within the British Empire; it is equally
true of the United States, Germany, and Switzerland. One can scarcely be
surprised at the emphatic repudiation which such a proposal received at
the hands of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. J.M.
Robertson) when, on February 7, 1912, in a speech at Lincoln, he said--

"There was, however, just one thing that must remain one for three
kingdoms, and that was the fiscal system, Customs and Excise. _It
was a federal uni