It is the essence
of that treaty that Ireland entered into it upon certain financial
terms, and among those terms was the condition that she should be
treated as a separate financial unit.
This Report, therefore, immensely strengthens the claim of Ireland to
more generous financial terms in 1912 than in 1886 or in 1893.
We want to set up in Ireland a high and strong sense of financial
responsibility. The control therefore, as well as the expenditure, must
be placed as far as possible in Irish hands, and for that purpose the
management, as well as the collection, of Irish taxes ought to be left
as far as possible with the Irish Exchequer that must be set up.
The tendency is started by the principle of the Bill of 1912, and the
policy of the next decade will be to place in Irish hands as rapidly
as possible both the collection and the administration of the finance
for all the great Irish services, including those at present "reserved"
as well as those at present "transferred."
This brings us finally to the vexed problem of Customs and Excise. It
is notorious that the greater part of the Irish revenue--the revenue of
a poor country, derived for the most part through indirect taxation--is
drawn from Customs and Excise.
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