tain than exists even at present, they would
study it with still more critical eyes,[66] as they would certainly have
studied the Old Age Pensions scheme with more critical eyes.

Here I am led naturally to the great and all-embracing questions of
Irish finance and expenditure, which lie behind all the topics already
discussed and many others. The subject is far too important and
interwoven with history to be dealt with otherwise than as an historical
whole, and that course I propose to take in a later part of the book. It
is enough to say that all the arguments for Home Rule are summed up in
the fiscal argument. Every Irishman worth his salt ought to be ashamed
and indignant at the present position.

The whole machinery of Irish Government, and the whole fiscal system
under which Ireland lives, need to be thoroughly overhauled by Irishmen
in their own interests, and in the interests of Great Britain. Among
many other writers, Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his "Dublin Castle and the
Irish People," Lord Dunraven in "The Outlook in Ireland," and Mr. G.F.H.
Berkeley in a paper contributed to "Home Rule Problems," have lucidly
and wittily described the wonderful collection of sixty-seven
irresponsible and unrelated Boards nominated by the Chief Secretary, or
Lord-Lieutenant, which, with the official services beneath them,
constitute the colonial bureaucracy of Ireland; the extravagance of the
judicial and other salaries, and the total lack of any central control
worthy of the name. By omitting a number of insignificant little
bureaux, the figure 67, according to Mr. Berkeley's classification, may
be reduced to 42, of which 26 are directly under Castle influence, and
the rest either branches of British Departments or directly under the
Treasury. In 1906, out of 1,611 principal official posts, 626 were
obtained purely by nomination, and 766 by a qualifying examination only.
In an able-bodied male population, which we may estimate at a million,
there are reckoned to be about 60,000 persons employed by the State, or
1 in 18. If we add 180,000 Old Age Pensioners, we reach the figure of
nearly a quarter of a million persons, out of a total population of
under four and a half millions, dependent wholly or partially for their
living on the State, exclusive of Army and Navy pensioners; again about
1 in 18. Four millions of money are paid in salaries or pensions to
State employees, and two and three-quarter millions to Old Age
Pensioners.