The life of the great minister was prematurely cut short; time brought with it its changes on its wings. The statesman who had living traditions of the Union and its finance had passed away; O'Connell had disappeared from the scene; the representation of Ireland had fallen into a deplorable state. Meanwhile the free trade policy of Peel had achieved great results in England and Scotland; free trade had given an immense impulse to our manufactures and our foreign commerce; the repeal of the corn laws had wonderfully quickened industry, and had been a magnificent boon to the mass of the people; the prosperity of Great Britain was advancing by leaps and bounds. The development of free trade was the object of nearly all our statesmen; to accomplish this it was essential still further to lessen or to abolish the duties on foreign imports, and to let in the raw materials of manufactures free; indirect taxation was still further to give place to direct. In 1853, and during part of the subsequent period, our finances were in the hands of a minister whose impulsive nature was upheld by a most imperious will, and who, whatever was his policy, seldom stuck at trifles. Apparently without mature reflection, and, it is to be hoped, with little knowledge of the facts of the case, Mr. Gladstone, setting the example of Peel at nought, suddenly subjected Ireland to the income tax, and began to raise the duties on Irish spirits; by 1860 these duties had been more than trebled; and the taxation of Ireland had been increased by upwards of two millions sterling. And what were the circumstances, during a large part of this period, of the country on which this enormous burden had been laid? Ireland, no doubt, had begun to revive from the effects of the catastrophe of 1845-47; but, compared with Great Britain, she was miserably poor; and the Great Famine had shaken her social structure to its base. Two millions of her population had fled from their homes into exile; a large part of the upper and of the middle classes had been involved in ruin; whole tracts of her lands were derelict wastes; her local taxation was exceedingly high. The imposition of this load of taxation on a country in such a condition, unjustifiable in the abstract, and from every point of view, was, in the existing position of affairs, an act of cruel wrong; no wonder even one of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues has remarked, measured as is his language, 'We think that if the House of Commons, in the period 1853 to 1860, when the great enhancement of taxation took place, had fully considered the circumstances of Ireland, they would not have felt themselves justified in increasing the taxation of that country by means of the income tax and the equalisation of the spirit duties.'[162] At this time, in a word, the future Solon of Home Rule proved himself to be the merciless Draco of Irish finance.