Setting, however, these last considerations aside, the Childers Commission has conclusively shown that Ireland is very largely overtaxed, and has been so for a long series of years; and the figures that represent this great overcharge by no means represent the real difference of the burdens imposed on the two countries. It does not require the authority of Pitt to tell us that even equal taxation, equally applied, is felt much more acutely by a poor community than by one that is rich and prosperous; let us assume, what is by no means the fact, that this equality exists as between Great Britain and Ireland, still Ireland suffers much more than Great Britain. As Mill remarked a long time ago, 'It is not the same thing to take £2 from a man who has £40 a year, as to take £4 from a man who has £80, or £40 from a man who has £800; the sacrifice imposed on the taxpayer is greater upon the man from whom you take £2 out of £40 than it is on the man from whom you take £40 out of £800, although the proportion is the same.' A few examples, taken from the case of Great Britain and Ireland, will make the truth of this proposition perfectly clear. The wages of an agricultural labourer in Great Britain are, say, £40 a year; the wages of an agricultural labourer in Ireland are, say, £26; the first pays £3 taxes on his tea and tobacco; the second pays only £2; but the £2 are obviously much the heavier charge. Or suppose that a British artisan has £100 a year, and an Irish artisan no more than £80; is not the first more lightly taxed than the second, if he contributes £5 to the revenue against £4? And the same thing happens if we ascend the social scale; the £150 income tax paid by a British landlord of £3000 a year is not felt by him to be such a charge as the £50 paid by an Irish landlord of £1000 a year; the same principle would extend to the profits of trade were there small sums in Ireland and large sums in Great Britain. Make taxes, therefore, as equal as possible, and make their incidence completely equal, still, in the case of a poor compared to a wealthy country, the real burden on the taxpayer will be very different; it was for this reason that the late Mr. Nassau Senior, an economist of no ordinary parts, pointedly remarked, as regards British and Irish taxation, 'England is the most lightly taxed and Ireland the most heavily taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally liable to equal taxation: I do not believe that Ireland is a poor country because she is overtaxed, but I think she is overtaxed because she is poor.'[167]