To understand the real state of the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland, it is necessary to go back to the times of the Union; those who resist the Irish demand avoid an appeal to history. The debates in the Irish Parliament in 1800 should be carefully studied, especially the speeches of Castlereagh, Grattan, and Foster. The Seventh Article of the Treaty of Union, set forth in this work, should also be diligently scanned and perused. See, too, the debates in the Imperial Parliament in 1816; the resolutions passed by the House of Commons in that year; and the Act abolishing the separate Exchequer of Ireland. Reference, moreover, should be made to the evidence taken before General Dunne's Committee in 1864, in which sophistry triumphed for the moment over truth. All these sources of information, however, are scanty and imperfect compared to the celebrated Report of the Childers Commission, with the valuable evidence annexed to it; this for the first time completely brings out the whole facts on the subject. The debates in Hansard on the financial claims of Ireland may also be looked at; but they are not of peculiar importance; the same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, magazines, and journals, in which endeavours have been made to answer the Report. I may be allowed to say that I have some claim to have a distinct opinion in this matter; when still quite a boy I often heard my grand-uncle, the late Sir John Newport, one of the ablest and last of the Chancellors of the Irish Exchequer, condemn the financial treatment of Ireland from 1800 onwards; many years afterwards I was intimately acquainted with several of the independent Irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school of Grattan, who protested against Mr. Gladstone's fiscal Irish measures from 1853 to a later date; Butt and Judge Longfield, both very able economists, fully concurred. With respect to local government and administration in Ireland, see Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. books iv. and v.; the Report of the Commissioners on Irish Corporate Reform issued in 1833-34, and the Irish Municipal Corporation Reform Act of 1840; the Irish Towns Commissioners Acts; a report made by Mr. W. P. O'Brien in 1878; a good treatise by Mr. Bailey published in 1888; and the recent Irish Local Government Act of 1898, with the debates in Hansard on this measure, should be perused. The authorities on Irish education of all kinds are numerous, and some valuable. Froude has glanced at the subject, with characteristic unfairness, in his 'The English in Ireland;' the refutation of Mr. Lecky, in his 'England in the Eighteenth Century,' is complete. A good description of education in Ireland, in all its branches, as it existed in 1812, will be found in Edward Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland,' vol. ii. ch. xxiv.; another in Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. book i.; vol ii. book x.; the author brings the narrative down to 1881. As regards high education in Ireland, reference may be made to 'The History of the University of Dublin,' by the Rev. W. Stubbs; to 'The Constitutional History of the University of Dublin,' by D. C. Heron; to the Report of Archbishop Whateley's Commission, in 1853, on the University of Dublin; to Mr. Gladstone's Irish University Bill of 1873, and the able debates on the subject in Trinity College and the House of Commons; to Mr. Fawcett's Act of 1873; to a masterly pamphlet by Butt, on the whole question, published in 1875; and to the 'Irish University Question,' by Archbishop Walsh, with recent debates in Parliament on Irish University reform. For the nature, constitution, and working of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's University, see the debates in Parliament when Peel introduced this policy; many Reports; the work of Archbishop Walsh, _ante_; and the Act creating the Royal University in Ireland may be examined. As regards primary and secondary education in Ireland, see the Reports of the Education Commissioners from 1810 to 1825; the Reports of the National Education Board; the Reports of the Kildare, Rosse, and Powis Commissions, noticed in this work; and Mr. Godkin's 'Education in Ireland.' An excellent synopsis of the subject, as a whole, will be found in 'The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' by Mr. Graham Balfour.