maintain her home and foreign government, a Royal Family, a debt, an
army with a war strength of 70,000, a fleet, and the expense of three
colonies, on an expenditure of four and a half millions.

Sweden, to take another case, with a population of six and a half
millions, a large commerce, and many industries, is able to support her
whole government, army, navy, diplomatic and consular service on a
budget of little more than five millions; and the cost of civil
government of Belgium, with a greater population and four times the
trade, is one-half that of Ireland. The relative cost of _home_
government per head of population, which amounts in Ireland to £1 14s.
3d., in England and Wales to £1 3s., and in Scotland to £1 3s. 3d.,
illustrates in a striking manner the ruinous condition of the present
incidence in Ireland.

If this administrative waste is palliated by the statement that it
retains money in Ireland, the reply is that the excess of administrative
expenditure which is included in this sum is enough to effect large
measures of social reform in the country, the benefit of which is not to
be named in the same breath with the present mode of maintaining an
extravagant staff of highly-paid officials. As things are, however, all
motives to secure economies in the Irish services are vitiated by the
existing system by which any economies in Irish administration go, not
to Ireland, but to the Imperial Treasury, and in this way economical
government is not merely not encouraged but actually discouraged, and
hence it is that one has such contrasts as that to be seen in each
year's Civil Service Estimates, where, under the item of stationery and
postage in respect of public departments, the amount for the last year
which I have seen is, for Scotland £24,000, and for Ireland,£43,000, and
that the Department of Agriculture, out of a total income from