This great increase of taxation, to a considerable extent, 'assimilated Ireland to Great Britain in finance;' placed the two countries under nearly the same fiscal system; made the taxes of each not far from equal. This assimilation, however, was still by no means complete--indeed, is not complete to the present day; Ireland has still fiscal privileges under the Treaty of Union; and this should be carefully borne in mind. Mr. Gladstone, moreover, when he made this increase, acknowledged that Ireland remained a distinct country, entitled to immunities of her own; when he made her liable to the income tax, he cancelled a debt of £4,000,000 which he professed she owed; and if this was an illusory pretence, for her liability for this reason was more than doubtful, and the income tax she has since paid has exceeded £23,000,000, still he distinctly admitted the principle--indeed, it has always been admitted by statesmen worthy of the name. The enormous new burdens imposed on Ireland, from 1853 to 1860, provoked widespread and profound discontent; a Parliamentary inquiry was conceded; a Committee of the House of Commons went into the subject in 1863-64. But the representation of Ireland, I have said, was feeble; her complaints were stifled by the arts of the treasury; the arguments of her members were overborne by specious but utterly false sophistry; the inquiry came to nothing as regards her interests. The question remained in abeyance for years; the Irish reforms of Mr. Gladstone, from 1869 to 1873, the troubles caused by the Land and the National Leagues, and the Home Rule agitation that followed, turned public attention away from the subject; but it was not forgotten by well-informed Irishmen; two real economists, Butt and Judge Longfield, insisted that Ireland had here a grievance; and this was the opinion of several independent gentlemen, survivors of the illustrious school of Grattan. At last Mr. Goschen, perhaps moved by remonstrances from Ireland being urged again, appointed a Committee of the House of Commons to examine into, and to report upon, 'the equity of the financial relations in regard to the resources and the population of the Three Kingdoms;' Mr. Gladstone, in 1893, recurred to the subject, which, rather unaccountably, had been let drop. He directed a Commission of great authority, composed for the most part of expert Englishmen, and presided over by the late Mr. Childers, a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Gladstone, to inquire thoroughly into the whole question of the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland, and fully to set forth the conclusions they should form. The scope of the investigation was to include the history of the subject since the Union; a consideration of the financial resources of Great Britain and Ireland regarded as distinct countries, and the principles to be kept in mind in forming a correct judgment; and, finally, the charge of Ireland with respect to the State, and the contribution which Ireland should make to it.[163]