The simplicity of this scheme seems to me to be its only merit. It disposes of all complicated bookkeeping, all heart-burnings over "true" and "collected" revenue, and all controversies, for a long time at any rate, over an Irish contribution to the Empire; while it involves and immensely facilitates a subsidy based on the reservation of selected Irish services for Imperial management and payment. On the other hand, it is not Home Rule. It annihilates the responsibility of Ireland for her own fortunes, and is, indeed, altogether incompatible with what we know as responsible government. Its germ appeared in the Irish Council Bill of 1907--a Bill which did not pretend to set up anything approaching responsible government, and to which the scheme was therefore in a sense appropriate, though it must, I think, have produced mischievous results if it had been carried into law.[150] I wish to speak with the utmost respect of Lord MacDonnell and the other patriotic Irishmen who have advocated this kind of financial solution. There was a time when it might have been good policy for Ireland to obtain any--even the smallest--financial powers of her own as a lever, though a very bad lever, for the attainment of more. But we ought now to make a sound and final settlement, and I do earnestly urge upon all those who have Irish interests at heart to reject schemes which merely evade, if they do not actually aggravate, some of the pressing difficulties of the Irish problem of to-day. The fact that Contract finance works well in India is _prima facie_ a reason why it should not work well in Ireland. It does not exist, and it could not be made to show good results, in any community of white men. If anyone is disposed to trace a faint analogy--which in any case would be a false analogy--with the lesser of the two small subsidies given by the Dominion of Canada in aid of the Provincial administrations,[151] let him imagine what the moral and practical consequences would be if, instead of constituting a small fraction of the provincial income, this subsidy were increased to a lump sum calculated by the Dominion Government as correct and sufficient for the whole internal government of the Province. And the pernicious results in a Canadian Province would be trivial beside the pernicious results in Ireland, where the whole system of expenditure and revenue needs to be recast; where large economies are needed, together with additional outlay on education; and where above all, the sense of national responsibility, deliberately stifled for centuries, needs to be evoked. Nothing could be more cruel to Ireland than to give her a fictitious financial freedom, and then to complain that she did not use it well. No nation could use freedom well under the Contract system of finance, whether based on a fixed grant or on revenue derived from Ireland. It is not in human nature to reduce expenditure unless the reduction is reflected in reduced taxation. Every