No special Irish memorandum was issued, and no attempt was made to adjust the scheme to Irish social and economic conditions.

But Budgets afford on the whole the capital instance of what we may call legislation by accident.

The Act of Union solemnly prescribes the principles on which these measures are to be framed, and points to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the trustee of Irish interests.

But nobody of this generation ever knew a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had even read the Act of Union; Mr Lloyd George, on his own admission, had certainly not read it in 1909.

What has happened is very simple.