complained that though £300,000 had been borrowed, the public grants amounted to £230,000.1 At this time the revenue of the country, exclusive of local taxation, amounted to £1,298,648, a sum which was totally inadequate to the expenditure sanctioned by the Commons, and of which more than a third was spent on management, bounties and appropriated duties, and was withdrawn from the control of the Government. The cost of collecting this revenue had risen from £81,000 in 1758 to upwards of £219,000 in the year 1784-5, though the new taxes were only additional duties on articles taxed before, and therefore an increase in the number of collectors was not necessary. 1 Debates in the Lords, iii.; Irish Debates, pt. ii., p. 82. As was said 2 Account of the revenue for the year ending Lady Day, 1785:— Net amount raised on the subject in Ireland, ex Net sum applicable to the current expenses of the nation £799,040 18 6 in the House, "it was as easy for an officer to receive two shillings as one on any article". It thus appears that the Irish revenue was collected at an expense of nearly seventeen per cent. One department of it, the stamp duties, was collected for nearly nineteen per cent. in this year. Though, as Lord Anally said, £300,000 was borrowed in 1783, yet in the same year the Commons rejected a bill for taxing absentees by 184 to 22.2 Such a tax would at this time have added at least £120,000 a year to the revenue. While the country was in great distress, everything was done in the most costly way. Four thousand a year was added to the salary of the Lord Lieutenant, and two thousand to that of his secretary. Three new judges were appointed at an expense of £6,000 a year. The salary of the Irish Speaker was greater by £1,000 a year than that of the Speaker in the Imperial Parliament. Fifty thousand pounds was lent to the undertakers of the Grand Canal, and £32,000 to Captain Brook, who shortly after failed. A custom-house, far more extensive than that of London, and which was to cost £263,381, was begun; and, in the last half year of 1785, bounties were increased by £52,000. Though waste and extravagance were still further beggaring the impoverished kingdom, we are told that "the prosperity of the country was advancing, and the revenue was rising". The revenue of a country may rise in two ways; by the expansion of its trade and commerce, the taxes remaining unaltered. This is prosperity. Or it may rise from an increase of taxation, while its trade and commerce are decaying. This was the case with Ireland, and meant ruin and bankruptcy. It is 1 Irish Debates, iii., p. 107. 2 Ib., ii., pp. 277-89. 3 Newenham, View, etc., of Ireland, p. 201. 3 4 Irish Debates, vii., p. 123. The Parliamentary Grants for bounties and premiums in 1785 amounted to £130,000 (Ib., vii., p. 241). well to compare this unfounded statement of Mr. Lecky with the language used in the Irish Commons in May, 1784, by the proposer of the address to the king: "While all Europe is rejoicing in the blessings of peace, and turning its thoughts towards manufactures and commerce, Ireland is plunged in the depth of despair and misery at finding herself incapable of deriving any benefit from the universal tranquillity, except by affording to her starving and industrious manufacturers more easy and frequent opportunities of flying into foreign countries ".1 1 Irish Debates, iii., p. 215. THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED. |