The appearance of the text of the Bill was not reassuring even to those advocates of Irish independence who were willing to take a measure of Home Rule as an instalment. The financial provisions of the Bill met with severe and justified criticism. In spite of the fact that Ireland had been systematically over-taxed for a century, and that a Parliamentary Commission had so reported nearly twenty years earlier, the financial provision for the proposed Irish Parliament could only be described as beggarly. And almost everything that really mattered in the government of Ireland was withdrawn from the competence of the Irish Parliament. It was described in mockery as a "Gas and Water Bill," and even convinced supporters of the Parliamentary Party had their qualms in declaring their acceptance of the measure. There was no dubiety about the verdict of the Nationalist organizations opposed to Mr. Redmond. _The Worker's Republic_ was outspoken in the extreme: it complained that the Bill had been extorted from the Liberals "by whining and apologizing": in an Open Letter to the United Irish League of Great Britain, it said, "You are told that the people of Ireland accepted the Bill as a full and complete recognition of our claim as Irishmen. That is a lie ... a Bill, which is the rottenest bargain ever made by a victorious people with a mean, pettifogging, despised Government." "A beggar," it wrote again, "gets only crumbs and we, Irish workers, want a country." The verdict of _Irish Freedom_ was equally emphatic; it was summed up in the phrase, "Damn your concessions; we want our country."