the realm consists of federated States with a common system of Customs
and Excise.

With regard to the first problem, it is, of course, easy, in the case of
a Federation, to distinguish between central, or Federal, expenditure
and local, or State, expenditure, because the functions of the Federal
Government and State Governments are delimited in the Constitution, and
the separate expenditures form the subject of separate balance-sheets.
But in a Union, and above all in a Union to which one part of the realm
is an unwilling party, like that of the British Isles, it is clear that
no absolutely accurate line can be drawn between Imperial and local
expenditure. The Army, the Navy, and a number of other things are
clearly enough Imperial, but there are many debatable items. For
example, Is the upkeep of the Lord-Lieutenant an Irish or an Imperial
charge? Is a loss on Post Office business in Ireland to be charged
against Ireland, or should Ireland be credited with a proportion of the
profits of the whole postal business of the United Kingdom? More
searching questions still: Is the enormous charge for the Irish Police,
which is under Imperial control, and exists avowedly for the purpose of
forcibly maintaining, in the Imperial interest, an unpopular form of
government in Ireland, to be charged against Ireland? Or, again, should
Ireland be debited with the cost of the machinery for carrying out Land
Purchase, a policy admittedly rendered necessary by the enforced
maintenance in the past of bad land laws? Obviously such questions can
never be answered so as to satisfy both Irishmen and Englishmen, because
they go to the root of the political relations between Ireland and Great
Britain. The Royal Commission, therefore, was naturally unable to give a
unanimous answer to the last clause of Question No. 3 of their Terms of
Reference--namely, "What is the Imperial expenditure to which Ireland
should equitably contribute?" Some members held that under the Union
even a theoretical classification was unjustifiable, while it was
obvious that under the Union no effect could be given to it. Still, the
classification had to be made, in order to arrive at a theoretical
estimate of the financial situations of Great Britain and Ireland
respectively, and the Treasury, charged with the preparation of this
estimate, took the only course open to it in reckoning as Irish
expenditure all expenditure which would not have to be incurred if
Ireland did