Enormous against Ireland as is this excess of taxation, it may amount to a very much larger sum, if the national account be taken on another, perhaps a sounder, basis. There is the highest authority to show that taxation ought only to fall, in the instance of any given country, on the surplus remaining over and above the cost of the necessaries of life; and as regards the populations of Great Britain and Ireland, this cost may be assumed to be £12 a head. But if we take the income of Great Britain to be 1400 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life at the above rate would for Great Britain be a sum of 324 millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be 1076 millions. On the other hand, if we turn to Ireland, the poor country, and suppose her income to be 76 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life for Ireland would be a sum of 46 millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be 30 millions only. On this hypothesis, the resources of Ireland which might be fairly taxed--her taxable capacity, in a word--would, compared with the resources of Great Britain, be, not as 1 to 20, but as 1 to 36 only; and her taxation ought to be less than £3,000,000, not, as before mentioned, less than £5,000,000. The Childers Commission, no doubt, with the exception of one of its members, did not give its sanction to this conclusion; but it was that formed by Sir Robert Giffen, a master of the subject on all its bearings, and it cannot, in common fairness, be left out of sight. Sir Robert Giffen's view is expressed in these words; it will be observed that his figures do not correspond with those just cited; but the only point to consider is the principle on which he takes his stand: 'If you deduct a minimum sum, so much per head from each of the community, as a sort of minimum sum, though you would not wish to take anything from a man who had no more than that, then the taxable income would be the whole income in each country above that sum. That was the sort of general idea. If you apply that to Ireland, and take a minimum sum of, say, £12 a head, you would get upon the basis of an Irish income of £76,000,000 a taxable surplus, I think, now of about £22,000,000, and in Great Britain your taxable surplus would come to over £900,000,000.'[166]