in a far greater degree by the cheap prices in the British markets, produced, in part at least, by the free and untaxed supply of foreign corn, live stock, dead meat, butter, cheese, eggs, and other articles of food.... It may even perhaps be said that just as Ireland suffered in the last century from the protective and exclusive commercial policy of Great Britain, so she has been at a disadvantage in this century from the adoption of an almost unqualified free trade policy for the United Kingdom.'[169] Many attempts, I have said, have been made to answer the conclusive Report of the Childers Commission, to carp at its proceedings, to challenge its statements, to deny that Ireland has been largely overtaxed; but, with scarcely an exception, they have been grotesque failures. I need hardly notice an audacious sally, which has been turned to account in the House of Commons, and has split the ears of the groundlings in different parts of England. England, the argument runs, has been too kind to Ireland; Ireland pays no land tax and sundry other duties; in other respects she is equally taxed with Great Britain; she has not even a semblance of a real complaint; and--exactly in the manner of Swift's satire--'let her hold her tongue, or it may be the worse for her.' Ireland, no doubt, 'assimilated as she has been in finance,' is free from some charges imposed on England; she has still 'exemptions and abatements' which, to some extent, preserve her rights under the Treaty of Union, and show that she is still financially a distinct country, as has been recognised by every leading British statesman, from the day of Pitt to the day of Mr. Gladstone. But the English land tax, properly speaking, is not a tax at all; it is a rent-charge for centuries payable by the land; at all events, the Irish Crown and quit rents may be set off against it; and, as to the other taxes referred to, the cost of collection in Ireland would exceed the returns; it would be a case of _in Thesauro nihil_, as in Plantagenet times. Another argument, of which the late Mr. Lowe was the author, is more plausible, and has done better service; but it is not the less shallow and false sophistry, when brought to the test. Taxation, it is said, falls on populations only; it is sheer nonsense to say that it falls on countries; it is not levied from Great Britain and Ireland; it is levied from the inhabitants within their borders. But the Englishman, the Scotsman, and the Irishman are equally taxed; the Irishman, indeed, has a small advantage; equality of taxation is the rule in this matter; and obviously equality is the same thing as equity. An English landlord in Kent, a Scotch landlord in Perthshire, an Irish landlord in Kildare, pay the same income tax on the same rentals; so does a merchant in London, a merchant in Edinburgh, a merchant in Belfast, on the same profits; and the same principle extends to all other classes. A farmer in Surrey, a crofter