HE TABLET.
A W e e k ly N ew s p a p e r a n d R e v ie w .
DÜM VOBIS GRATULAMUR, ANIMOS BTIAM ADDIMÜS UT IN INCŒPTIS VESTRIS CONSTANTER MANEATIS.
Vol. 88. No. 2940.
F rom the B r i e f o j H i s H o lin ess P iu s IX . to T h e T a b l e t , J u n e 4, 1S70.
L ondon, S eptem ber 12,
[R e g is t e r ed a t 1896. t h e Gen e r a l P ost
P r ic e sd . b y P o s t O f f i c e a s a N ew spaper
'C hronicle of t h e W e e k ! Page
The Financial Relations Between Great Britain and Ireland— The Views of the Unionist Commis- sioners— Arrival o f the “ Windward ” : Meeting With Nansen—
'Discovery of a New Sea— The . Release of the Dynamite s— Mr. Justin McCarthy and the Irish
'Convention— The School Question in Manitoba-The Barcelona Bomb Outrage— The New Enemy_ to Welsh Nonconformity — Kaiser .and Tsar— School Board Responsibility-Population and Marriages dn Ireland— The Prince’s Leger— The Position _in Cuba— Captain Dreyfus and his Accomplices . . 397 L e a d e r s :
Mr. Lacey’s Latest Theory . . 401 The Pacification of Crete.. . . 403 The Pope and the Pamphleteer . . 404 The Eucharistic Congress at Lugo 407 N o t e s - . . . . . . . . . . 410
CONTENTS
Death of the Veiy Rev. Jerome
Vaughan, O.S.B. . . . . . . 411 C orrespondence :
Rome :—(From Our Own Corre
Page spondent) .................................. « 413 News from Ireland . . . . 415 L e t t e r s t o t h e E d it or :
Mr. Lacey’s New Theory.. .. 417 The Modern Goth . . . . . . 417 Conformity in 1559 . . . .. 417 Corporate Reunion Under Mary 418 A Memorial Stone to the Rev. Dr.
Canty . . . . ; . .. 418 Dean Freemantle and Christianity 4*8 Barlow’s Consecration .. .. 41S Oxford Locals and Religious
Knowledge . . . . . . 418 R eview s :
Chateaubriand . . . . . . 418 Fellow Travellers . . . . . . 41g “ The Month” . . . . . . 420 The Magazines . . . . . . 420 The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook 420
Grant to Barry Catholic School:
Page
Further Protest .. .. . . 420 Mr. Gennadius and St. Theodore of Canterbury . . . . . . . 4 2 1 The Buckfastleigh School Board
After their Defeat .. . . . . 421 The Catholic “ Five Hundred ” . . 422 St. Winefride’s Well . . . . . . 422 Catholic Truth Society: Preston
, Branch .................................... 423 * Rom E veryw h ere . . . . . 426 A p pe a l to t h e C h a r it a e l e . . 426 SCCTAL AND POLITICAL . . . . 426
SUPPLEM ENTInstruction on University Educa
tion •• •• . . . . . . 429 | N ews from t h e S choots:
The Catholic Schools at Barry and ’*■ *''*
Buckfast.. .........................430 The Education Report . . •• 43t Rate-Aid for Voluntary Schools.. 431 Stonyhurst College . . . . 431 Waste of Trained Teachers . . 4*r
N ew s from t h e S chools (Con
Page tinued): Is Rate-Aid Gaining Favour ? . . 432 Mr. Cripps, M .P ., and a New
Education Bill . . . . . 432 The New Bill : Another Sugges
tion . . . . . . . . 432 Diminution and Increase . . 432 Male and Female Teachers . . 432 The Irish Intermediate Honour
Lists . . . . .. . . 432 N ew s from t h e D io ceses : Westminster ........................... 433
Southwark . .
433
Hexham and Newcastle . . .. 433 Leeds . . . . . . . . 433 L i v e r p o o l ................................434 Northampton ........................... 434 Nottingham .. . . . . . 434 Portsm outh................................424 Salford . . . . . . . . 424 Glasgow ......................... . . 424
*#* Rejected MS. cannot be returned unless accompanied with address and postage.
CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK.
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THE members of the Royal Com
mission on the Financial Relations c f Great Britain and and Ireland. Ireland, have been unable to agree upon any final report. There are no less than
•seven reports and two memoranda. With the important exceptions of Sir David Barbour and Sir Thomas Sutherland, however, the Commissioners agree on five propositions. They affirm “ that Great Britain and Ireland must for the purpose of this inquiry be considered as separate entities. That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear. That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and i860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances. That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden. That, whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about i -n th of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding i-20th.” The importance of the first finding is reduced to the vanishing point by the subsequent statement in the report that the Commission was appointed in view of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and that “ the terms of reference that were drawn up for their guidance were probably dictated by the fact that the investigation was contemplated in connection with ” that measure. The Commission was in fact essentially a Home Rule Commission. It was appointed in 1894 in connection with the financial side of the Home Rule Bill, and so had a separatist object. A ll the Commissioners, with the exception of Sir David Barbour and Sir Thomas Sutherland, were either English Home Rulers or Irish members. A writer in The St. James’s Gazette puts the case with much clearness : “ Anybody can understand the two possible ways of taxing
Ireland. One is to treat it as a separate country and to exact a se.ttled or proportionate payment as ‘ tribute.’ That is Separatist finance. The other is to treat an Irishman like an Englishman, Welshman, or Scotchman, and his place of residence as, for Imperial purposes, an accident.
N ew Series, Vol. L V I . . No. 2,249.
That is Unionist finance. And the latter is what was provided for by the Act c f Union. By that Act, while providing for an interim arrangement by which Ireland should pay two-seventeenths of the expenditure of the United Kingdom, a period was contemplated when ‘ the expenditure of the United Kingdom shall be defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the like articles in both countries.’ It is irrelevant to argue that the interim arrangement was unjust. No doubt it was. Two-seventeenths was more than Ireland should have paid. But that arrangement terminated in 1817, when Parliament resolved that the period contemplated by the Act of Union had arrived, and the Exchequers of the two countries were amalgamated. In 1875 Sir Stafford Northcote declared that ‘ theproposal to test the proportion of taxation due from either country by the rates of their aggregate incomes, would have been suitable to the state of things before the amalgamation of the Exchequers, but would not apply to the existing system, the principle of which was to apply the same taxes uniformly throughout the kingdom.”
Sir David Barbour, in a very able report,
__T™. y'f.n® dissents from the view that it was the busicommissioners ness 0*ti:,e Commissioners merely “ to report the proportion in which the total taxation of the United Kingdom would be divided between Great Britain and Ireland if relative capacity to bear taxation were the only matter to be considered,” and that they were shut out “ from taking into consideration the purposes to which the levenue drawn from Ireland is devoted.” He refuses to treat the two countries as “ separate financial entities,” or to accede to the contention that “ their instructions were based on this view.” “ To hold that in the present day and for the future Great Britain and Ireland must be treated as separate financial entities would, in my opinion,” he says, “ be equivalent to the repeal of one of the most important provisions of the Act of Union.” It is curious to note that the Home Rule majority, while contending that Ireland ought to be treated as a financial unit for purposes of revenue hold that she ought not to be so treated when the question of expenditure has to be considered. If Ireland is to be treated as a financial unit on both sides of the account, her special claim at once ceases to exist. The balance is all the other way. In the words of Sir David Barbour, “ I f she pays more revenue than would be due from her on the basis of a contribution in proportion to her resources, she receives back the whole of the excess and at least one million sterling in addition in expenditure for
