BACK PAGES:In 1912 the Home Rule Bill was going through the House of Commons in London, teasing out the details of the proposal which was ultimately passed. Among those details were the taxation powers of the proposed Irish parliament, leading to committee-stage discussions and disputes over how Ireland would fare financially under the arrangements. The Irish Timeswas totally opposed to the Bill and, in this editorial, it detected (with some exaggeration) the proof of the financial disaster waiting to happen in a contribution by the Irish Party leader, John Redmond, writes JOE JOYCE
IN SPITE of the closure and the guillotine, the real character of Mr Asquith’s Home Rule Bill is being dragged into the light. Unionists know that it is a scheme utterly subversive of the maintenance of harmonious relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Nationalists now realise with bitter resentment and disappointment that the Bill is a delusion and a cheat.
When Unionist critics pointed out that the Irish Parliament’s income would be miserably inadequate, and that every great national service would be starved, Mr Redmond was always ready with one triumphal answer. Under British misrule the Government of Ireland is hopelessly extravagant and corrupt. The genius of an Irish Parliament would make it cheap and efficient. The financial parsimony of the Home Rule Bill would be more than counteracted by tremendous economies in Irish administration. Today this pleasing theory is abandoned: we know the truth. All the talk about “immense economies” was humbug; Mr Redmond admitted this yesterday “on the floor of the British House of Commons.” The Government has deleted one of the most essential provisions of its Bill, the Irish Parliament’s right to reduce customs’ duties. Under this provision it would have been permissible for an Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer to reduce the burden of indirect taxation on the Irish poor. Yesterday Mr Redmond actually declared that the Government’s latest restriction is “wise and proper.” The possibility was only a possibility on paper. A generation must elapse before “substantial economies” can be made under a Home Rule Government. In a word, Mr Redmond confesses frankly that this Home Rule Bill is exactly what Irish Unionists have always contended: a machine for taxing the very life and spirit out of the Irish people.
The only sources of income under the Customs and Excise arrangements will be beer and spirits. Even if those two industries are taxed up to the further limits of endurance, a tenth part of the cost of the Irish administration will not be met. The Irish Chancellor must fall back on the only economy possible to him, the reduction or abolition of old age pensions, and on ingenious schemes of internal taxation.
All such schemes must be irritating, but only one can be really profitable. Land taxation will follow this Home Rule Bill as the night the day. The chief cost of “self-government” will be thrown on the farmer at the most critical moment in the history of Ireland’s agricultural development. At the same time, we shall be liable to all Imperial taxation, including the prospect of more radical budgets. Mr Redmond will be unable to object, because he has just identified himself completely with the whole programme – social, economic, and educational – of the Radical-Nationalist Party. It is almost incredible that this Bill should have a single friend in Ireland. It offers nothing which should tempt any Nationalist to walk across the street.
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