It is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a tendency to create local and even national ill-will; to set parts of one country against other parts, and two countries against each other; it distinctly alienates Ireland from Great Britain; as I have said, it is full of mischief and peril. In truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the overcharge of Irish taxation; it has never entered the minds of statesmen. Nothing can be more certain than that every great British financier, from the day of Pitt to the day of Peel, and to the day of Mr. Gladstone, has regarded the expenditure of the Three Kingdoms, as this is paid into a common exchequer, as a general fund to be allocated as the State requires; and has not regarded it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in separate districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim against another. I quote from a report of one of the members of the Childers Commissions: 'A division of the expenditure of the United Kingdom into "charge for Irish purposes" and "Imperial expenditure," cannot be made under the system of finance embodied in the constitution established by the Legislative Union. All expenditure under that system is "expenditure of the United Kingdom," or, to express it more briefly, "Imperial expenditure;" and all Imperial expenditure is defrayed from the common fund of the Imperial Exchequer. If a part of the Imperial expenditure be described as a charge "for Irish purposes," this classification does not affect the fact that it is Imperial expenditure, and charged as such upon the whole Imperial revenue. To regard this expenditure as non-Imperial, to deduct it from the particular revenue contributed by Ireland to Imperial expenditure, to treat the fraction of Irish revenue left as if it were the whole of the Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, and to regard Imperial expenditure itself as not including "the charge for Irish purposes," would be to do what the Constitution does not sanction: it would be to deal with the revenue and expenditure of the United Kingdom as if the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were raised and administered by separate authorities, each of which, having first, out of its own revenue, defrayed its separate charges, then applied the balance to payment of common expenses, which, in that case, would be properly classified as Imperial.'[176] And the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen is to the same effect: 'The opinion which I have formed is that, on the whole, it is not possible to make the distinction between the different objects of Imperial expenditure which is made in some of these discussions; that, in fact, all the expenditure by an Imperial Government is to be considered expenditure for Imperial purposes, and although part of it may be spent locally, you cannot in any way call it expenditure for the special benefit of that locality. It is expenditure for the general objects of the Imperial Government.'[177]