The Irish Budget The Irish Free State has so often,
in this country, been threatened with ruin if it persists in the ways of Mr. de Valera that the Irish Budget may seem somewhat surprising to Englishmen. As Mr. McEntee, the Finance Minister, said, it shows the soundness of the country's finances, with increase in consuming power, and increases in revenue from income- and property-taxes. More fortunate than ourselves, the Irish suffer 'no increase in taxation, and the surplus of £322,500 is to be spent in taxation relief ; of greatest importance, perhaps, is that the cattle and sheep levies are to be abolished. But the unfortunate Anglo-Irish dispute still shows itself in the £2,180,000 of bounties on exports to Great Britain, one-half of which Mr. McEntee proposes, as before, to raise by .borrowing. The Budget is itself evidence that the Anglo-Irish dispute cannot be solved by Mr. Thomas' methods of coercion, which Mr. Malcolm MacDonald has not yet repudiated.
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