following is an extract from a speech spoken by Mr. Foster, in April, 1799:

"Has Scotland (asked Mr. Foster) advanced in prosperity since the Union, as much as Ireland? Mr. Dundas, her great advocate, states the progress of her linen manufacture, to shew her increase of prosperity; it was one million of yards in 1706, and in 1796, 23 millions. How does the linen manufacture of Ireland stand the comparison?

"that is, 83 times greater, as to quantity, and 137 times greater, as to value, in 1796, than in 1700; and thus, that manufacture, which is the staple of both kingdoms, and which Mr. Dundas very properly brought forward to rest his arguments on, rose from 1 to 88 in Ireland-in separate and ununited Ireland-under the nurture and protection of Ireland's Parliament; while, during the same period, it rose in united Scotland, without a resident Parliament, from 1 to 23 only. Has Mr. Dundas any more arguments to produce?

"Why don't Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas rely on the increased population of Scotland, as well as on its trade-it was one million, at the union, and Mr. Pitt says it is a million and a half now. If a population be a desirable object, if it be riches to a state, and the means of increasing the empire's strength, Ireland has increased three-fold without a union, and Scotland only one-half with it.

"Why don't he refer to their agriculture, which is peculiarly applicable to the question, because the rise began in Ireland with the constitution of 1782, which the Minister now wants to annihilate ? It has risen since that period to the full value of a million yearly, including the decrease, or rather stoppage of import, the immense accession of home demand, and the increasing export, even so much as to supply largely, every year, this affluent kingdom, whose prosperity we are desired to imitate, and who cannot maintain itself.

"If Ireland then stands the comparison with united Scotland, let us try how she stands with united Britain

"In Ireland the exports rose nearly from one to ten, and in Britain, from the year after the union, which I have chosen for a fair comparison, as it includes the Scotch trade, from one to three and a fraction. The Irish is almost ten times as much as it was in 1706—the British not four times."

More need not be offered to the public on Mr. Martin's attempt to prove that Ireland had been in a declining state subsequently to 1782.

Chapter the second is intended to exhibit progression since the Union. Its most prominent feature is a tonnage table, the compilation of which proves the reliance that may be placed on this patronised publication, not on matters of induction merely, but of fact.

Mr. Moreau has introduced a tonnage table in his elaborate work on Ireland, page 20. This table shews that the tonnage in some of the Irish ports has advanced since 1791, and in others declined Now, Mr. Martin carefully selects the name of a town where there has been an advance, but omits a town where there has been a decline. He not only does this, but falsifies Moreau in some remarkable instances, especially that of Cork, of whose tonnage that author has given the following account in the periods alluded to :—

This is one of the ports in which Mr. Martin asserts there has been au increase, and he does this on the alleged authority of Moreau! In Waterford, Larne, and Limerick, the average tonnage has been rather stationary, and these ports Mr. Martin puts into his table of increase, making Larne and Limerick afterwards a part of a list of places in

which "tonnage has more than doubled!" In Londonderry, there has been on an average of years, a decrease—and yet it is one of the towns introduced in Mr. Martin's table of increase. The same may be said of Sligo; and the following ports have no place at all in the table, there having been in them a decrease :

Coleraine
Galway
Killibegs

Youghal
Newport

Dundalk
Wicklow

In all these places there has been a decrease. In Galway it has been from 2,286 tons to 578; in Newport, from 727 tons to 85; in Coleraine, from 569 tons to 111; in Killibegs, from 2,052 to 436; and in Youghal, from 5,226 to 417; and yet, Mr. Martin does not hesitate to assert that " almost every outport has doubled its tonnage Limerick, Newry, Wexford, Londonderry," &c.; "in fact," adds Mr. Martin, emphatically, on every point of the Irish coast.'

That tonnage has on the whole increased in Ireland, cannot be denied; but it is a delusive criterion of trade, as has already been shewn. Tonnage means the capacity of ships, not the quality, or even quantity of the goods conveyed. Much of our increase of tonnage is to be ascribed to the increased importation of coals for making whiskey, and the increased exportation of live cattle--both of them sure indications of a falling, instead of a rising, country.

Mr. Martin states that the population of Dublin was 110,437, in 1813. It must then have very rapidly decreased, though he imagines the reverse, for 25 years before that period it was 182,370. He reckons the number of persons whom the managers of the mendicity institution are able to provide for as the whole of the paupers of Dublin. He compares the post-office revenue in 1800 with its amount in 1829, without giving us a notion of the rate of the postoffice tax in the two periods, or the great saving that has been lately made in the collection of this particular impost. He shews an increase in the consumption of newspaper stamps, but this would not satisfy him without making out a case as to advertisement duty. "The stamp duty on advertisements has," he says, "increased in a greater proportion than the number of newspapers. In some years it doubled itself." Now, in the very last year it amounted to only £15,672, though it was £20,475 in 1815.

However, his work has one demonstration, as it is regarded by its author, that Ireland has progressed more rapidly than England, and it is given as an answer to a statement before the National Council. It is a table in which the quantities of certain taxed articles that each Englishman was able to enjoy at certain periods are set forth. To enable us to compare this with the state of things in Ireland, a corresponding table should have been given for the latter country; but Mr. Martin thinks his demonstration is good without a help of that description. Now, we shall give some of his figures, (omitting rum and brandy, the consumption of which has fallen to a few thousand gallons in Ireland,) and we shall annex to them some of our own, taking for our guide the quantities given in Mr. Spring Rice's compilation of 1830, and set forth in preceding page.

VOL. I. NO. XII.

5 E

Average Consumption per head, of several articles in Great Britain.

Thus we see how Ireland " has progressed more rapidly than Great Britain."

We are unwilling to trouble the public more with this rubbish, but it may be permitted to us to add to the other illustrations of its importance to this Whig government, who are encouraging the circulation of it, that it alleges (p. 107,) that Ireland has received a greater remission of taxes since the war than England or Scotland; that Mr. Grattan declared that the Union once settled should not be disturbed; and that it recommends the passing of an Act of Parliament to render every attempt or design to repeal the Union liable to the punishment of high treason!

TAXATION MEASURED BY THE HEAD.

Political economists are accustomed to estimate the pressure of taxation on a people by comparing its total amount to the number of heads. Sir Henry Parnell has fallen, as has been already intimated, into this error. He says, in his book on "Financial Reform," that the taxation paid by Ireland amounts to nine shillings a head, whereas that of England amounts to seventy shillings a head. From this the cursory reader necessarily infers that there is eight times the degree of taxation in England that there is in Ireland. The refutation of the fallacy is, that England and Wales are precisely similar as to the degree of taxation, and yet, reckoning by the head, there is a greater disparity between the Welchman and Englishman than between the Englishman and Irishman, for the revenue credited to Wales does not give more than seven shillings a head for its inhabitants, whereas the revenue of Ireland gives nine shillings. The fact is, that all the customs' duties of Great Britain and Ireland are alike, nearly all the excise duties, nearly all the stamp duties, and all the post office duties. The assessed taxes and soap tax constitute the great difference between the two countries. It has been officially announced, since the commencement of the present sessions, that the latter tax is to be reduced to one-half its present amount, and extended to Ireland; and there is even an expectation encouraged of a great reduction, if not the entire abolition, of the assessed taxes. As soon as this expectation is realised, and the intended alteration of the soap duties carried into effect, there will be no perceptible difference-no difference, reaching even to two millions-between the taxation of the two countries, though, if the Act of Union were operative, Great Britain, in consequence of the magnitude of her debt in 1800, would be subject to an amount of impost extending to nearly fifteen millions, from which Ireland would be altogether free.

"MONOPOLY" OF THE ENGLISH MARKET.

We hear much of the bounty bestowed upon Ireland by giving her the "monopoly of the English market." That "monopoly" means no more than that she is not excluded from English ports, and that finding admission thither, cheap labour, produced by the halfstarvation of her people, enables her to undersell the British farmer. Notwithstanding this monopoly, there were in ten years, ending 1830, as many quarters of foreign as of Irish corn sold in England. In lieu of this sort of "monopoly," the English have the monopoly of the Irish market for their goods and wares-a monopoly that gives employment to at least fifty times the labour which is employed in our "monopoly."

"DIRECT" TAXES.

Great are the advantages which we are supposed to be derived from the absence of "direct" taxes. There is, however, no practical difference between direct taxes and indirect imposts affecting the necessaries of life. It is surely as great a grievance to a gentleman to pay 50 per cent. on wine or 100 per cent. on tea, as to pay so much a piece for his hearths and windows. The direct taxes of Ireland, when they were wholly removed, produced only £300,000 a year.

TRANSFERS OF STOCK.

Accounts are still separately kept of an Irish and British debt, and transfers to each occur every year. The debt which is called Irish is the amount of the whole borrowing upon which the dividends were payable in Dublin in 1817. On the 5th of January, 1818, this debt was £21,004,430, which was subject, for charge and interest, to £948,406 per annum. Since 1818 this debt has been annually in. creasing, by the operation of the system of "transfers," which are carried on under the authority of an act passed for that purpose. In pages 146 and 147 of the Finance Accounts for 1832, we have the amount of the transfers in that year. The "capital transferred from the funded debt in Great Britain to the funded debt in Ireland" is stated in page 146 to have been £1,311,650; and in the opposite page there is an amount of £515,646, which was "transferred from the funded debt of Ireland to the funded debt of Great Britain." The balance is £796,004, and by that sum had the Irish debt been increased in the last year. The augmentation of the Irish debt effected in this way since 1818 has been £12,438,644; for the total debt, which in that year was £21,004,430, is stated in page 147, before mentioned, to be now £33,443,074, which bears an interest and charge of £1,168,880 per annum. If, then, the debt really incurred by Ireland up to 1817 was sixty-seven millions, half of the amount is now a separate charge upon Ireland, and its interest is paid out of Irish taxes.* That interest is, as has been stated, £1,168,880; and

* The increase of taxation in Ireland, between the Union and the consolidation of the Exchequers, greatly exceeded that of Great Britain. This is attested by the report of the Finance Committee of 1815. If Ireland went beyond Great Britain in yielding (according to her ability) revenue, she should not have been allowed to go beyond Great Britain in incurring debt. Subjecting her to her proportion, that is, to the two-seventeenths, of the total borrowing between 1801 and 1817, her entire debt at present, whether payable in London or DubIbu, cannot exceed sixty-seven millions.

the interest of the half, still payable in London, may be taken at an equal amount. The Times asks whether any portion of the Irish taxes reaches the British treasury, after payment of the "domestic expenditure" of Ireland. The answer is yes; and that the portion which must, in the last year, have reached that treasury, amounted to the full interest of this moiety of debt, without reckoning the tea tax, refined sugar tax, or any of the other uncredited taxes. In the appendix to the report of Mr. Spring Rice's committee on the state of the Irish poor, the money remaining in the Irish Exchequer, on the 5th of January, 1830, is set down at £1,104,392; and the "domestic expenditure" has been considerably diminished since that time.This sum must have been remitted to the British Exchequer; and the remittances for tea alone must, in the same year, have amounted to nearly half a million, leaving out of consideration all the other unacknowledged duties, that is, those duties paid in English ports on numberless commodities consumed in Ireland.*

The increase of the Irish debt, by these "transfers," is taken by some as a proof of the rapid accumulation of capital in Ireland in latter years. In the absence of less equivocal evidence of the acquisition of national wealth, it is little to be relied upon. Much of this balance of £12,438,000 must have been Irish property, placed in the British funds previously to 1817, and subsequently transferred for the convenience of receiving the dividends in Dublin; more of it is, very probably, capital long employed in the Irish linen, silk, and other trades, but withdrawn since they have fallen into decay. A return of stock transfers was some time since referred to in Parliament, and is, indeed, introduced into the appendix to one of the tithe reports, by which it is made to appear that the balance in favour of Ireland has, in five years, reached even to fourteen millions. The balance in that period has not been more than half that amount; and since 1818, the declared total of the Irish debt proves the total "transfers" to have been £12,438,000.

RELIEF GRANTED SINCE THE WAR.

In 1822 a return was presented to Parliament, shewing the taxes, "the collection of which ceased during the preceding ten years."By these returns it appears that the relief extended to Great Britain, up to 1822, was the following:

To this more than two millions were added in 1822. In 1823 the assessed taxes were reduced £2,250,000; and again in 1825 £276,000 In 1830 the beer duty, amounting to £3,110,000, was re

more.

* The author of "Commentaries on Ireland" doubts whether there was any remittance to the British Exchequer in this year. The writer of the present article believes it was in 1830 that Sir George Hill met a political friend of his in Whitehall, and observed, as that friend assured the writer, that "he was going to do what would be considered extraordinary in Ireland, that is, to transfer £1,100,000, surplus revenue, from the Irish to the British Exchequer."