WHAT IRELAND PAYS.
(To me Boma co THS "iltrecreres."] Srs,—I have received the following letter from Mr. George Fox. It has already appeared in the New York World. Mr. Pox, it may be remembered, is the able American whcee admirable work in enlightening the American public on the true facts of Irish history has been often noticed in the Spectator. It was particularly happy and useful of Mr. Fox to give the real facts in regard to a suggestion which has taken in so many people—the suggestion that Ireland is unfairly treated in the matter of taxation by Great Britain, whereas, of °ours% exactly the opposite is the case. There is, as Mr. Fox points out, no tax paid by Irishmen which is not paid by Englishmen and Scotsmen, though there are taxes paid by Englishmen and Scotsmen which are not paid by Irishmen. The whole canton. tion is, as Mr. Fox shows again, a patent absurdity. No one need have fallen into it if he had only remembered that it is not a place, or a thing, or a nation which pays taxes, but always an individual man or woman. But if each individual does not pay more but less because he lives in Ireland, how can Ireland he overtaxed
In this context I may mention another admirable letter by Mr. Fox, which unfortunately you will not have space to quote. in which he meets the reckless allegation that he is not a true American. As a matter of fact he is a descendant of Puritan ancestors, the first of whom landed in Boston in 1630, while his Irish opponent is a naturalised American: Altogether Mr. Fox is a remarkable example of a very large though not a very noisy clam in America—the men who under- stand the true position as regards Ireland and who know England to be what she is, a truly democratic State, and not the ridiculous feudal figment of imaginative Irishmen intent on (meeting prejudice among the leas well-read portion of the
American public.—I am, Sir, lac., S.
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