As to the precise sum the Commissioners differ. Some went as high as
L3,500,000, others down to L2,000,000, but all, except Sir Thomas
Sutherland and Sir David Barbour, set it at about L2,000,000. Mr.
Childers, unhappily, died before the close of the Commission. But he
wrote an epoch-making Report, in which he estimated the excess of
taxation at L2,250,000.[77]
Now, it is useless to make light of this Report. It was the solemn
judgment of the highest financiers of the day on the financial workings
of the Act of Union. If we turn back to the debates in Parliament in
1800, especially to the speeches of Pitt, prophesying that the Act of
Union would take the wealth of England across St. George's Channel, and
apply it to Ireland, we cannot escape some sombre reflections on the
short-sightedness of great statesmen. Pitt's judgment was disturbed by
the existence of a war with France, which created in him an intense
desire to unite the two countries. Otherwise he would probably have
foreseen that for a rich partner to unite his finances with a poor
partner certainly meant bankruptcy for the one, and probably, in the
end, also ruin for the other. Taking the nineteenth century as a whole,
the fundamental financial error has been this--that Ireland has been
taxed on the theory of equality with England in point of wealth.
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