The tendency is started by the principle of the Bill of 1912, and the policy of the next decade will be to place in Irish hands as rapidly as possible both the collection and the administration of the finance for all the great Irish services, including those at present "reserved" as well as those at present "transferred." This brings us finally to the vexed problem of Customs and Excise. It is notorious that the greater part of the Irish revenue--the revenue of a poor country, derived for the most part through indirect taxation--is drawn from Customs and Excise.[78] It is not, perhaps, surprising, therefore, that the Bill of 1912 should go some way towards meeting the demand that has sprung up in various quarters, both in Ireland and in England, for the control of customs and excise by the Irish Parliament. The proposal of the Government is that we should extend to Ireland, with some variations, what is at present the financial arrangement in regard to customs and excise between the British Treasury and the Isle of Man. The first fact to be remembered quite clearly is that the Irish Parliament is absolutely debarred from creating any new duty. It will not be able to draw up any new set of tariffs. In other words, it will have to adapt its revenue to the general financial policy of the central government, whether that be a free trade policy or a tariff reform policy. But Ireland is to be allowed to vary her customs within certain limits. She may, for instance, reduce her customs to the lowest point, on the only condition that she loses thereby equivalent revenue. But on the main custom duties which fall on such articles as tea, sugar, cocoa, tobacco, and so forth, she cannot raise her customs beyond 10 per cent. The only exceptions will be beer and spirits, on which Ireland may raise her customs or her excise to any point that she desires. It will be necessary, of course, to have rebates or countervailing duties in regard to articles transferred from Great Britain to Ireland, or _vice versa_, and to that very slight extent alone will these proposals affect the trade relations between Ireland and England. I may add that the same power of reduction or addition will extend both to income tax and death duties up to the limit of 10 per cent. for increase--a provision which will safeguard the industries of the North from being sacrificed to the needs of the South.[79]