should require, maintain the position of Ireland as entitled to separate treatment as a whole, so far as relates to taxation. It must also be recollected that, as a matter of fact, Ireland has, at all times since the Union, in various degrees received such separate treatment. Ireland, therefore, cannot be regarded as merely a group of counties of the United Kingdom.'[173] Two other arguments may be ascribed to the ingenuity, if this is the true word, of the Treasury; but the first rests on a gross misrepresentation of fact, the other upon a false theory; both, with a slight reservation, may be dismissed as hopeless. Ireland, it is said, may possibly be overtaxed--admit this for the sake of argument--but she has had more than her fair share of loans from the State; a considerable part of these has been freely remitted; this has not been the case in England and Scotland; a large counterclaim, therefore, may be made against her. 'Out of a total sum of about one hundred and nineteen millions and a half advanced in the United Kingdom, a little over fifty-two millions, or 43.7 per cent., has been advanced to Ireland, and of this, so large a proportion as one-fifth, or over ten millions, had to be remitted, or treated as a free grant, whilst only one fifty-eighth part of the advances made to Great Britain were so treated.'[174] So far as these loans have been advances for the real good of Ireland, for example, for the promotion of reproductive works-these may fairly be taken into account; but millions have been misapplied and wasted or spent in the unproductive relief of distress;[175] these sums probably are greater than the excess made out by the Treasury. As regards the remission of the L10,000,000, the assertion relied on is simply deceptive. Not less than L4,000,000 of this sum represent the fund the extinction of which was the consideration of putting the income tax on Ireland by Mr. Gladstone; and, as the charge of that tax has been since more than L23,000,000, it savours of impudence to call this a remission; it was writing off a doubtful debt to justify a new and portentous burden. The residue of the L10,000,000 is composed of advances that have been misspent or spent on purposes really not Irish; these were not remitted in the proper acceptation of the word. 'The remaining portion of the ten millions of alleged remissions of loans consists mainly of remissions of the repayment of expenditure by the Board of Works, where it was shown that such expenditure had been wasteful, and of advances to the clergy and laity of the Established Church of Ireland, which advances Parliament, by legislation, deprived them of the ability of repaying. Altogether it would appear, from Sir Edward Hamilton's evidence, that in reality only about one million out of the ten corresponded in their character to the advances made to Great Britain, and that consequently the proportion of real remissions of loans to Ireland did not