Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/323

After Limerick small indeed, but it was looked upon with horror by the Irish Parliament of the day, and that this should have been so goes some way to prove the country's poverty. The sums raised in taxes in Ireland were certainly small as far as actual amounts went, and compared with the large sums which were being paid by British taxpayers, but they seem to have been as much as could reasonably have been got from the Irish people. But we have of course to look beyond the actual money raised and into the whole question of Irish administration and expenditure if we wish to see whether Ireland was lightly or heavily taxed. A great part of the Irish revenue went in salaries and pensions to persons who hardly ever set foot in Ireland, while the vicious habit of keeping all remunerative posts in the Government, Church, and Army in the hands of Englishmen, many of whom were absentees, acted like a huge tax on the Irish people. A great part of the money paid by Ireland went to uses which corrupted and degraded the country. The financial abuses of the eighteenth century in the shape of pensions to King's favourites and sinecure offices of all kinds, ground the people down by unnecesary [sic] taxes, or taxes which might have been spent for useful purposes, and they perverted the morals of the upper class of Irishmen. 311