The Campaign Against Over-Taxation, 1863–65: A Reappraisal

Kanter, Douglas

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-04309-4_9

Douglas Kanter⁷

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance ((PSHF))

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Abstract

This chapter uses the ephemeral campaign against over-taxation, 1863–65, as a window onto the politics of Irish public finance in the mid-nineteenth century. It identifies the influences that encouraged the tax protest, analyses the organisation and geography of the agitation, and reappraises the case against post-Famine public finance in order to recover an alternative Irish fiscal policy. By demonstrating that grievances concerning taxation were subsequently incorporated into the home rule movement, it concludes that a long-forgotten campaign for tax reform had significant consequences for late Victorian and Edwardian politics.

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Notes

1.
Freeman’s Journal (hereafter FJ), 22 Apr. 1863, in Larcom Papers, National Library of Ireland (hereafter NLI) MS 7786.
2.
Irish Times, 22 Apr. 1863; Nation, 25 Apr. 1863, in Larcom Papers, NLI MS 7786.
3.
Thomas Kennedy, A History of the Irish Protest against Over-Taxation, from 1853 to 1897 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, and Co., 1897), ix–x.
4.
W. E. Vaughan, ‘Ireland c. 1870’, in A New History of Ireland, vol. 5: Ireland under the Union, I: 1801–70, ed. W. E. Vaughan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 787–88.
5.
David S. Johnson and Liam Kennedy, ‘Nationalist Historiography and the Decline of the Irish Economy: George O’Brien Revisited’, in Ireland’s Histories: Aspects of State, Society and Ideology, ed. Seán Hutton and Paul Stewart (London: Routledge, 1991), 19; Liam Kennedy and David S. Johnson, ‘The Union of Ireland and Britain, 1801–1921’, in The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy, ed. D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (London: Routledge, 1996), 44, 46–48.
6.
Two recent accounts have briefly examined the high politics of the movement; see Pauric Travers, ‘The Financial Relations Question, 1800–1914’, in Ireland, England and Australia: Essays in Honour of Oliver MacDonagh, ed. F. B. Smith (Canberra: Australian National University, 1990), 43; K. Theodore Hoppen, Governing Hibernia: British Politicians and Ireland, 1800–1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 160–62.
7.
Martin Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1799–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 12–22; Isaac William Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad, ‘The Thunder of History: The Origins and Development of the New Fiscal Sociology’, in The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Prospective, ed. Isaac William Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 18–19.
8.
Article seven is reprinted in House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on Taxation of Ireland’, Sessional Papers, 1864 (513), vol. 15, pp. 9–11; see also Trevor McCavery, ‘Politics, Public Finance and the British-Irish Act of Union of 1801’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 10 (2000): 354–59.
9.
McCavery, ‘Politics’, 373–74; Douglas Kanter, ‘The Politics of Irish Taxation, 1842–53’, English Historical Review 127, no. 528 (2012): 1124–25; Hoppen, Governing Hibernia, 38–40.
10.
R. B. McDowell, The Irish Administration, 1801–1914 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), 87–92.
11.
Earl of Dunraven, The Finances of Ireland before the Union and after: An Historical Study (London: John Murray, 1912), 82.
12.
House of Commons, ‘Finance Accounts … of the United Kingdom’, Sessional Papers, 1852–53 (275), vol. 57, pp. 12, 36, 41.
13.
Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue on the Duties under their Management, C. 82 (1870), vol. 20, p. 226.
14.
Except where noted, this paragraph is based upon Kanter, ‘Irish Taxation’, 1140–48.
15.
Inland Revenue … Vol. II, C. 82–1 (1870), vol. 20, p. 568. The rate was graduated between 1854 and 1863; the higher rate is provided here and throughout. Some Irish income taxpayers, however, enjoyed a lower effective rate than their British counterparts, due to differences in the method of assessment; see Kanter, ‘Irish Taxation’, 1152–53.
16.
Inland Revenue, 226.
17.
House of Commons, ‘Finance Accounts … of the United Kingdom’, Sessional Papers, 1861 (326), vol. 34, pp. 10, 24–25.
18.
Ibid., Sessional Papers, 1852–53 (275), vol. 57, p. 12, Sessional Papers, 1861 (326), vol. 34, p. 10.
19.
Douglas Kanter, ‘The Galway Packet-Boat Contract and the Politics of Public Expenditure in Mid-Victorian Ireland’, Historical Journal 59, no. 3 (2016): 766.
20.
On post-Famine prosperity, see R. V. Comerford, ‘Ireland, 1850–70: Post-Famine and Mid-Victorian’, in New History, ed. Vaughan, 374–82.
21.
James S. Donnelly Jr., ‘The Irish Agricultural Depression of 1859–64’, Irish Economic and Social History 3 (1976): 33–54.
22.
W. E. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 230; Emigration Statistics of Ireland, C. 1700 (1877), vol. 85, p. 646; Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland, No. 3668 (1866), vol. 36, p. 12.
23.
Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 149, cols. 1743–48 (26 Apr. 1858), vol. 154, cols. 836–37 (7 July 1859), 1419 (18 July 1859); Cork Examiner, 30 June 1858; Nation, 10 Sept. 1859, 15 Oct. 1859.
24.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 156, cols. 852 (10 Feb. 1860), 1514–15, 1521 (21 Feb. 1860), 1991 (28 Feb. 1860), 2185 (2 Mar. 1860).
25.
Debt and Taxation of Ireland (Reprinted from the ‘Irish Quarterly Review’, for January, 1860) (Dublin: W. B. Kelly, 1860), 21–25, 31.
26.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 157, cols. 1661–64 (30 Mar. 1860).
27.
On Dunne, see Stephen Ball, ‘Dunne, Francis Plunket (1802–1874)’, in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1832–68; Online Preview, ed. Philip Salmon, http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1832-1868/member/dunne-francis-plunket-1802-1874 (accessed 27 Mar. 2018).
28.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 157, col. 1470 (28 Mar. 1860).
29.
Ibid., vol. 159, cols. 1971–73 (16 July 1860).
30.
FJ, 18 July 1860, 20 July 1860, 7 Mar. 1861; Nation, 28 July 1860, 1 Sept. 1860.
31.
Nation, 8 Dec. 1860.
32.
W. J. O’Neill Daunt, journal for 15 Jan. 1861, 25 Feb. 1861, O’Neill Daunt Journals, NLI MS 3041, ff. 672–73; Cork Examiner, 28 Jan. 1861.
33.
Nation, 30 Mar. 1861, 7 Sept. 1861; Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 162, cols. 1119–20 (25 Apr. 1861), 1423–26 (2 May 1861), 2043 (13 May 1861).
34.
Kanter, ‘Packet-Boat Contract’, 767–68.
35.
Nation, 24 May 1862.
36.
On Fisher, see Richard S. Harrison, A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Quakers, 2nd ed. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008), 89; Don Lehane, ‘History of Kinsalebeg: Fishers of Pilltown’, http://kinsalebeg.com/chapters/fishers/fishers.html (accessed 18 July 2017).
37.
Waterford Mail (hereafter WM), 20 July 1853, 22 June 1863; A. P. W. Malcomson, John Foster (1740–1828): The Politics of Improvement and Prosperity (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), xvi, 45, 383; Andrew Shields, ‘Irish Conservatives, the “Patriot” Tradition and the Act of Union, c. 1829–69’, in Culture and Society in Ireland since 1750: Essays in Honour of Gearόid Ó Tuathaigh, ed. John Cunningham and Niall Ó Ciosáin (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2015), 144–59.
38.
WM, 5 Jan. 1863; F. P. Dunne to Daunt, 30 May 1870, O’Neill Daunt Papers, NLI MS 8045/4.
39.
Joseph Fisher, How Ireland may be Saved (London: Ridgway, 1862), 83–87, 95.
40.
WM, 10 Sept. 1862, 27 Oct. 1862, 7 Nov. 1862, 14 Nov. 1862, 21 Nov. 1862, 31 Dec. 1862; Joseph Fisher, The Case of Ireland (London: Ridgway, 1863).
41.
Nation, 8 Nov. 1862, 15 Nov. 1862, 22 Nov. 1862; FJ, 11 Nov. 1862, 30 Dec. 1862; WM, 21 Jan. 1863.
42.
WM, 19 Nov. 1862.
43.
Ibid., 2 Jan. 1863, 7 Jan. 1863, 27 Mar. 1863.
44.
On Blake, see K. Theodore Hoppen, ‘Tories, Catholics, and the General Election of 1859’, Historical Journal 13, no. 1 (1970): 56, 65, 67.
45.
WM, 6 Feb. 1863.
46.
Reports of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Public Petitions, Session 1863, app. 46.
47.
WM, 6 Feb. 1863.
48.
Public Petitions, Session 1863, index, xlviii, identifies twenty-nine petitioning Unions; for the remainder, see WM, 18 Feb. 1863, 23 Feb. 1863; Clare Journal, 19 Feb. 1863; Cork Examiner, 20 Feb. 1863; Nation, 28 Feb. 1863; FJ, 3 Mar. 1863; Londonderry Standard, 12 Mar. 1863.
49.
William L. Feingold, The Revolt of the Tenantry: The Transformation of Local Government in Ireland, 1872–1886 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1984), 14, 22; Virginia Crossman, Politics, Pauperism and Power in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 2, 38–40.
50.
Feingold, Revolt of the Tenantry, 21–22, 24–25, 30–31.
51.
Relief of the Poor in Ireland, 13.
52.
Public Petitions, Session 1863, index, xlviii; WM, 20 Feb. 1863.
53.
Poor rates were assessed and levied locally, so there was not a uniform rate throughout Ireland; for the rates in 1863, see Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland, No. 3338 (1864), vol. 25, pp. 470–78.
54.
For resistance to rate in the 1840s, see the chapter by Mel Cousins in this volume; for post-Famine politicisation, see Feingold, Revolt of the Tenantry, 70–71, 82.
55.
Adapted from I. Gregory and P. Ell, Irish Poor Law Union and Barony Boundaries, 1841–1871, https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-4999-1 (accessed 5 Jan. 2018).
56.
Brendan O’Cathaoir, John Blake Dillon: Young Irelander (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1990), 145–47.
57.
FJ, 12 Feb. 1863.
58.
Mary E. Daly, Dublin: The Deposed Capital; An Economic and Social History, 1860–1914 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1985), 227; Stefanie Jones, ‘Dublin Reformed: The Transformation of the Municipal Governance of a Victorian City, 1840–1860’, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Trinity College Dublin, 2001), 2:288–91.
59.
Jones, ‘Dublin’, 2:323–29.
60.
Financial Wrongs of Ireland: International Taxation; Report to the Corporation of Limerick, from the Special Committee (Limerick: Munster News Office, 1863).
61.
FJ, 28 July 1863.
62.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 169, cols. 329–33 (13 Feb. 1863), 706–14 (23 Feb. 1863), 956–59 (27 Feb. 1863), 980–1001 (2 Mar. 1863), 1114 (5 Mar. 1863), 1208 (6 Mar. 1863), 1608–28 (19 Mar. 1863).
63.
William Gladstone, memoranda for [1 Jan. 1863], 12 Mar. 1863, 8 Apr. 1863, in The Gladstone Diaries, ed. M. R. D. Foot and H. C. G. Matthew, 14 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968–94), 6:172, 188, 193.
64.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 170, cols. 207–9, 213–16, 224c–224d, 224j–224m (16 Apr. 1863); Inland Revenue … Vol. II, 568. The bequests duty was ultimately abandoned.
65.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 170, cols. 171, 816–36, 862 (12 June 1863); FJ, 16 June 1863.
66.
Report of the Special Committee of the Municipal Council of Dublin on the State of the Public Accounts between Ireland and Great Britain (Dublin: Joseph Dollard, 1863), 9, 10, 12; FJ, 28 Oct. 1863.
67.
WM, 16 Dec. 1863, 30 Dec. 1863, 11 Jan. 1864,
68.
Ibid., 25 Jan. 1864, 27 Jan. 1864, 29 Jan. 1864, 8 Feb. 1864, 15 Feb. 1864, 19 Feb. 1864, 22 Feb. 1864, 18 Mar. 1864. Branches were established in Carrick-on-Suir, Clonmel, Kilkenny, Limerick, New Ross, Waterford, and Youghal.
69.
Public Petitions, Session 1864, index, xli–xliii, identifies twenty-one petitions; for the remainder, see WM, 24 Feb. 1864, FJ, 4 Mar. 1864, 16 Mar. 1864.
70.
Gladstone to the Earl of Carlisle, 7 Jan. 1864, Larcom Papers, NLI MS 7786.
71.
Gladstone to Carlisle, 11 Jan. 1864, W. N. Hancock to Sir Thomas Larcom, 19 Jan. 1864, Larcom Papers, NLI MS 7786.
72.
W. Neilson Hancock, Report on the State of Public Accounts between Great Britain and Ireland (Dublin: Alexander Thom, 1864), 1–13, 26–33, 35, 58.
73.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 173, cols. 1199–1217 (26 Feb. 1864).
74.
Kennedy, Irish Protest, 45–47.
75.
W. D. Rubinstein, ‘Northcote, Stafford Henry, first Earl of Iddesleigh (1818–1897)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew et al., http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.fau.edu/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-20328?rskey=l2bdlV&result=2 (accessed 27 Mar. 2018).
76.
Commons, ‘Taxation of Ireland’, 64–71, 105–24.
77.
Ibid., 71, 155.
78.
Ibid., 80, 89, 98, 100, 160–61, 163–64, 166, 201, 268–69, 291–93.
79.
Ibid., 43–44, 90, 118.
80.
Ibid., 98, 204, 218–19, 236–37.
81.
Ibid., 166, 206, 268, 290, 295–96.
82.
Ibid., 101–2, 179–83, 214, 239, 270, 272.
83.
Ibid., 9–17.
84.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 174, cols. 588–90 (7 Apr. 1864).
85.
Daily Express, 8 June 1864, in Larcom Papers, NLI MS 7786; Daunt, journal for 14 June 1864, O’Neill Daunt Journals, NLI MS 3041, f. 748.
86.
Commons, ‘Taxation of Ireland’, 3, 32.
87.
WM, 1 Aug. 1864.
88.
Daily Express, 11 Oct. 1864; Northern Whig, 13 Oct. 1864; Newry Herald, 15 Oct. 1864; Southern Reporter, 15 Oct. 1864; Londonderry Standard, 15 Oct. 1864, all in Larcom Papers, NLI MS 7786.
89.
WM, 2 Nov. 1864.
90.
Dunne to Daunt, 21 Nov. 1864, O’Neill Daunt Papers, NLI MS 8045/4.
91.
W. J. O’N. Daunt, Publications of the Irish National League—No. 3: The Financial Grievances of Ireland (Dublin: N. Harding, 1864).
92.
O’Cathaoir, Dillon, 150–54.
93.
WM, 4 Nov. 1864, 16 Nov. 1864, 30 Nov. 1864, 7 Dec. 1864.
94.
Commons, ‘Taxation of Ireland’, 23.
95.
‘Mr. Lane Joynt’s Suggestions for the Amendment of the Arterial Drainage Laws’, Journal of the Royal Dublin Society 4, nos. 32–33 (1865): 381; Lord Wodehouse to Gladstone, 14 Dec. 1864, Lord Palmerston to Gladstone, 20 Dec. 1864, Gladstone Papers, British Library Add. MSS 44224, f. 25, 44273, f. 98.
96.
Gladstone to Sir George Grey, 13 Dec. 1864, Kimberley Papers, Bodleian Library MS Eng. c. 4016, f. 114.
97.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 177, col. 683 (24 Feb. 1865).
98.
Ibid., 1027 (2 Mar. 1865).
99.
Ibid., vol. 178, col. 1120g (27 Apr. 1865).
100.
FJ, 28 Apr. 1865.
101.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 178, cols. 1317 (2 May 1865), 1450 (3 May 1865).
102.
House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on the Taxation of Ireland’, Sessional Papers, 1865 (330), vol. 12, pp. 6, 8, 10–11, 13–14.
103.
Dunne to Daunt, 24 May 1865, O’Neill Daunt Papers, NLI MS 8045/4.
104.
WM, 16 June 1865, 23 June 1865, 28 June 1865, 14 July 1865.
105.
Ibid., 17 July 1865.
106.
FJ, 11 July 1865.
107.
WM, 13 Dec. 1865.
108.
R. V. Comerford, The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society, 1848–82, 2nd ed. (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1998), 142.
109.
H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1809–1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 120–28; Daunton, Trusting Leviathan, 172–73.
110.
Andy Bielenberg, ‘The Irish Distilling Industry under the Union’, in Refiguring Ireland: Essays in Honour of L. M. Cullen, ed. David Dickson and Cormac Ó Grada (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2003), 296.
111.
House of Commons, ‘Imperial Revenue (Collection and Expenditure) (Great Britain and Ireland)’, Sessional Papers, 1899 (318), vol. 51, pp. 242, 244.
112.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 184, col. 822 (16 July 1866).
113.
Report from the Board of Public Works, Ireland, No. 3676 (1866), vol. 24, p. 463, C. 154 (1870), vol. 17, p. 359.
114.
K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846–1886 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 118; Philip Harling, The Modern British State: An Historical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 84–85; Kanter, ‘Packet-Boat Contract’, 760–61.
115.
Peter Gray, ‘The Making of Mid-Victorian Ireland? Political Economy and the Memory of the Great Famine’, in Victoria’s Ireland? Irishness and Britishness, 1837–1901, ed. Peter Gray (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 151–59.
116.
Daunton, Trusting Leviathan, 61–63.
117.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 173, col. 1209 (26 Feb. 1864).
118.
Commons, ‘Taxation of Ireland’, Sessional Papers, 1864, 243–44.
119.
Ibid., 288.
120.
Daunt, journal for 9 Aug. 1865, O’Neill Daunt Journals, NLI MS 3041, f. 780.
121.
Dunne to Daunt, 20 Nov. 1865, O’Neill Daunt Papers, NLI MS 8045/4.
122.
Nation, 4 Nov. 1865.
123.
C. J. Woods, ‘Daunt (Moriarty), William Joseph O’Neill’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography, ed. James McGuire and James Quinn http://dib.cambridge.org.proxy.bc.edu/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a2414 (accessed 27 Mar. 2018); Nation, 20 Aug. 1870; FJ, 26 Jan. 1874; Ball, ‘Dunne’.
124.
Report of the Committee Appointed by the Council of the Home Government Association to Examine the Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland, and the Pressure of Taxation upon Irish Resources (Dublin: Robert Chapman, 1873); Dunne to Daunt, 3 May 1873, 10 May 1873, 26 June 1873, O’Neill Daunt Papers, NLI MS 8045/4.

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Kanter, D. (2019). The Campaign Against Over-Taxation, 1863–65: A Reappraisal. In: Kanter, D., Walsh, P. (eds) Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland, 1662–2016. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04309-4_9

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