FROM THE ARCHIVES:Nationalist MP and barrister Tim Healy told the House of Commons that the Irish people's hatred of taxation was a guarantee that Ulster need not fear extra taxes from an Irish Parliament — one of the Unionists' main arguments about Home Rule. – JOE JOYCE
IT WAS a delusion to think that the North-East of Ulster was an especially prosperous part of the country, and that on that account its fat ribs might be cut into by the Irish Parliament.
It was a great delusion to think that the North-East part of Ireland might suffer from an Irish Parliament, which was going to be composed of monsters or lunatics, according to honourable gentlemen above the gangway.
When Mr. Gladstone’s Bill was under discussion [20 years earlier] he had the figures, and these were the facts – Dublin paid a larger tax bill than Belfast. (Hear, hear.) Leinster was richer than Ulster, and, what was more, if they went to any insurance company in London, or to any large firm supplying goods, they would be told that Dublin credit was better than Belfast credit. (Hear, hear, and cries of dissent from the Unionist benches.)
Turning to the dissenters, Mr. Healy said – “I heard it sworn to not long ago.” (Laughter and Ministerial cheers.) Why was it that insurance rates were higher in certain towns on the North-East of Ulster than in any other parts of Ireland?
Why was it that the only place in which they had large convictions and conspiracies for insurance frauds was in this little and prosperous part of Ireland. (Ministerial laughter.) [...]
Mr. Healy said they had sat there with a considerable amount of patience, and listened to every kind of slander hurled at the other provinces of Ireland, as if that part of the country were inhabited by angels, as they saw them above the gangway – (laughter) – and the rest of the country inhabited by inferior beings. He did not however, wish to make any attacks upon his few friends above the gangway, or upon Ulster.
The two speeches with which the amendment [to remove the Irish parliament’s power to tax] were destitute of a single rag of argument. If there were one thing which the Irish hated more than anything else, it was additional taxation. (Laughter.) If they looked at Mr. Gerald Balfour’s Local Government Act they would find all sorts of provisions to prevent undue expenditure on roads and bridges.
The expenditure on roads and bridges, which Mr. Balfour was so afraid of had been practically nil, and Englishmen had gone over to Ireland with whips and scorpions to try and induce the local authorities to spend money in ways in which Mr. Balfour feared they would spend too much.
He complained that, instead of argument, they had merely been given general damnation of the character of the Irish people. The suggestion that members of an Irish Parliament were going to act madly or foolishly, were going to do something which would bring their country and themselves into discredit, and their people into poverty, was unworthy of consideration.