Barbour thought it an incorrect interpretation, and reached the more logical position that Ireland, both for revenue and expenditure, could be regarded as a separate entity. This view enabled him to put forward an argument which, while ostensibly palliating the over-taxation of Ireland, in reality condemned the whole of the political system established by the Union. We can, he said, in effect, rightly distinguish between Imperial and local expenditure, and it is permissible to spend more on Ireland than on Great Britain. By so spending more we not only cancel our debt to Ireland, but make her a present of a million which would otherwise go to swell her contribution to Imperial purposes. Now, to get at the pith of this argument, the reader must bear in mind what Sir David Barbour thought it needless to remark upon, that Ireland had, and has, a separate quasi-colonial system of administration of her own, but outside her own control, a system of which he approved. In other words, besides having to be considered in finance as a "separate entity," she was to a large extent in actual fact, politically, a "separate entity," though not a self-governing entity, to which through the channel of the Irish Government Departments a special large quota for local expenditure could be easily allocated. As an economist, therefore, and as an upholder of the strangely paradoxical system set up by the so-called "Union," Sir David Barbour was absolutely consistent. So were Lord Farrer, Lord Welby, and Mr. Currie in coming to diametrically opposite conclusions. The crux of the discussion, stripped of academical reasoning, was simple. Everything turned, obviously, on the nature, amount, and origin of Irish expenditure. Sir David Barbour had passed lightly over these vital points, recommending only that any future _saving_ of expenditure in Ireland ought to be used for Irish purposes--a further admission of Ireland's separate political existence--and shutting his eyes to future _increases_ of expenditure. Lord Farrer and his colleagues, while agreeing that it was impossible to alter the taxation of Ireland so long as the Union lasted, agreed that additional local expenditure in Ireland could not be regarded as a set-off to undue taxation, not only because such a doctrine was inherently fallacious on economic grounds, and would hardly be listened to in the case of any other country than Ireland, but because Irish expenditure was subjected to no proper means of control. Both Irish revenue and Irish services, the former being only theoretically, the latter actually, distinct and separate, were outside the control of Irishmen, who had therefore no motive for economy. Nor was there any proper measure of determining what expenditure was good for Ireland and what was bad, though they held that there was reason to believe that much of Irish administration was both bad and costly. With regard to the extensive system of Imperial loans, whose charge swelled the Irish