The financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland have been a subject, at intervals of time, no doubt, of strong controversy during a whole century. I shall not harp on the saying of Johnson to an Irish friend, 'Avoid a Union with England, she will only rob you;' but, in the opinion of well-informed Irishmen, the fiscal treatment of Ireland, since 1800-01, strikingly illustrates the significant remark of Burke, 'When any community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connection is, the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior, which, in all matters of controversy, will probably decide in its own favour.' There is no reason to impeach the good faith of Pitt and Castlereagh; but the financial arrangements they made for Ireland, when the Union became law, were denounced by the most distinguished Irishmen of the day; these imposed on Ireland an overwhelming burden, and, in fact, reduced her to the very edge of bankruptcy. A compromise was effected in 1816-17; this has been described as a generous boon to Ireland; but it was at best a slight relief from injustice; and it weakened securities she had against fiscal exaction, while it involved her in liabilities which, if remote, were not the less possible. It is a most significant fact that Peel, who, as Chief Secretary from 1812 to 1818, was familiar with the economic state of Ireland, refused, though under the strongest inducements, to apply to Ireland the fiscal charges extended to her by one of his brilliant successors; the most sagacious financier of the nineteenth century played, in this matter, a very different part from the most impulsive and not the least unscrupulous. In 1853, and from thence in other years, Mr. Gladstone, in order to carry out a policy distinctly opposed to many Irish interests, subjected Ireland to a sudden and heavy load of taxation, exactly at the time when, for the plainest reasons, she ought to have been exempted from it; from that day to this, Irishmen, who understand the question, are agreed that this was gross, nay, cruel, injustice. The whole subject of British and Irish financial relations was sent by Mr. Gladstone to a Commission in 1893, here following the example of Mr. Goschen; a careful inquiry was held during many months; the Report of the Commission was startling and important in the extreme. This tribunal, mainly composed of eminent English experts, announced, and that almost with one voice, that Ireland was being enormously overtaxed, and had been for upwards of forty years; and it plainly intimated that a remedy for this wrong should be found. No real answer has been made to this remarkable judgment; the attempts at answers that have been made are nearly all mere trifling; Lord Salisbury's Government evidently believes that an answer is not possible; it promised to appoint another Commission to investigate certain parts of the subject; years have passed, and it has not performed its promise.