f Edmund Burke, is
said to have accounted for the swampy condition of the Phoenix Park by
saying--"The English Government are too much engaged in _draining_ the
rest of the kingdom to find time to attend to it."

Enough has been said to show that the process of which Sir Hercules
spoke is still going on. One would have thought that counsels of
prudence would have made an end of it. It remains to be seen whether the
uncontestable facts to which they themselves have subscribed will
prevail with the Government. "The liberality, the justice, the honour of
the people of England" are concerned in it now, as truly as when Pitt
spoke. Moreover, it is one of the instances in which the claims of
justice and of expediency coincide. The findings of the Financial
Relations' Commission fully justified the attitude of the Irish Party to
the proposal, under Mr. Gladstone's Bill, that the Irish contribution to
the Imperial Treasury should be one-fourteenth of that of Great Britain,
while Mr. Parnell declared that it ought to have been one-twentieth.
The population, since the publication of the Report of the Commission,
has decreased by a quarter of a million, but taxation has increased
from,L7,500,000 to L10,500,000. If Ireland had secured the fixed
contribution, against the height of which she protested, she would
nevertheless have been guarded from such a disproportionate rise of
taxation.

Whatever test be taken, be it population, a comparison of exports and of
imports, the consumption of certain dutiable articles, relative
assessments to death duties, income tax, or the estimated value of
commodities of primary importance consumed, every one of them shows the
relative backwardness of Ireland as compared with Great Britain, in view
of which the fact that the cost of government per head of population is
double in Ireland what it is in England, shows the extent to which the
one is liable in damages to the other. The increased expenditure on the
navy obviously does not benefit equally the two countries, of which the
one only has dockyards and manufactories, and this is especially the
case seeing that the country which lacks these things is also without a
commerce needing defence; while any advantage resulting from a portion
of the army being quartered in Ireland is minimised when it is found
that arms and accoutrements are purchased in England.

The attempt to stultify the findings of the Commission on the ground
that its report was