more useful to the nation, and more honourable to himself, than that which might be rendered by one of the sons of the Queen, who should devote his best energies to the grateful and, we believe, by no means difficult task of winning to the Royal family of England the affections of a people whom we believe nothing but systematic neglect could have estranged.

Another complaint which may justly be made on behalf of Ireland is that she has been somewhat overlooked in the distribution of public patronage. We do not think that Ireland has had her fair share in the allocation of public establishments. In a rich country these things are hardly felt, in a poor one they are regarded as great benefits. Nothing that tends to break the monotony of Irish life and Irish employment can be wisely neglected. There is one grievance which Ireland shares in common with the two other portions of the United Kingdom, of which she may be said to be in some degree at least the author, that is the impossibility which she shares in common with England and Scotland of passing the most necessary bills through Parliament. Take, for instance, the Valuation Bill, a measure which from its importance, and its obvious necessity and justice, would long ago have commanded the assent of any legislature in the world except our own. It may be said, 'Physician, heal thyself.' Give up the inveterate habit of obstruction, and you as well as Ireland shall benefit by the reformation. This may be very true and very telling in the mouth of a smart debater, but, after all, mankind are not to be governed by epigrams, nor is an exposure of the reason why work is not done in itself a sufficient excuse for not doing it. We ought to be able to govern by the means which the Constitution places at our disposal, and the fact that one part of the machine refuses to work, is no excuse for leaving our work undone, but only an incentive to find some other way of doing it. It is a melancholy, but an undoubted, fact, that a certain number of members of Parliament have openly adopted the idea, not only that their duty consists in doing nothing themselves towards discharging the office of a legislature, but that they are bound to exert their utmost efforts in order to make those who are willing to work as useless as they are. As we have no means of getting rid at once of persons who take so singular a view of the office which they hold, the only thing that occurs to us is to find some one who will do the duty for them. As these tactics have rendered it impossible for Parliament to discharge its duties, and as those duties cannot be left permanently undischarged, we must find some other body to do the work. There must be a division of labour, and as we are to have one Parliament which is to do little else except talk, and that for the purpose of preventing work, we must invent some inferior machine which may supply the deficiency.

The New Zealanders have two generals, one to act and the other to talk, and we cannot, we fear, do better than follow their example.

of all that we should wish to remember. It is a standing memorial of evil times and of evil actions. The Lord-Lieutenancy, which in the tyrannical hands of Strafford was little short of an absolute despotism, has sunk now to a pageant which exists for no better purpose than to perpetuate senseless pomp and to give an excuse for the useless expenditure of public money. A Colonial Governor with his Parliament and his young community which looks up to him for counsel and advice is a Prince in comparison with the Lord-Lieutenant of the present day. The office seems to exist for no better purpose than the support of the shopkeepers of Dublin. To the nobility of Ireland such an office placed over them must be anything but agreeable. They are placed under a peer often of inferior rank to themselves, and who is practically the subordinate of the Irish Secretary who does not always enjoy a seat in the Cabinet. Lord John Russell did on one occasion propose to abolish the office, but gave up the notion on a suggestion from the Duke of Wellington that in the case of a rebellion there would be no one to give orders. The telegraph and the railway have at any rate cleared away this difficulty, whatever it was worth, and made it quite certain that in the event of a rebellion we shall not lack either soldiers or commanders. The long and unvaried succession of failures which have hitherto attended every attempt to knit together the hearts and affections of two races, which ought to be as closely united in feeling as they are by geographical position, warn us not to be over-sanguine of success. But it is very difficult, when one is conscious of the most sincere desire to meet in every possible way the wishes of a race to whom we are indissolubly bound, to acquiesce in the belief that the effort is vain and the thing impossible. At any rate we should not sit down in despair till we have exhausted every means in our power, and that we cannot say we have yet done.

We are also bound to admit that, considering her size and her importance, Ireland has received but a scanty share of royal and political patronage. The residence of the Queen in Scotland has entirely eradicated old jealousies and disputes, and made the two parts of the Island one to all practical intents and purposes. Why should we despair of the effects of a similar treatment, when applied to a race so sociable and so susceptible to all kindly influences as the Irish? A hundred years ago the Duke of Rutland was sent over to drink the Irish into good humour. Times and manners have changed, but we cannot help thinking that the good humour and kindness, without the drinking, might, if exercised by some prominent member of the Royal family, produce the happiest results. At any rate, when we consider how great an effect may be produced on a sensitive and quick-witted people, by the wish to conciliate their goodwill and affection, we are inexcusable for not having long ago tried the experiment, and still more inexcusable if we leave it untried now. If the affection of the Irish people is worth having, it is surely worth seek

more useful to the nation, and more honourable to himself, than that which might be rendered by one of the sons of the Queen, who should devote his best energies to the grateful and, we believe, by no means difficult task of winning to the Royal family of England the affections of a people whom we believe nothing but systematic neglect could have estranged.

Another complaint which may justly be made on behalf of Ireland is that she has been somewhat overlooked in the distribution of public patronage. We do not think that Ireland has had her fair share in the allocation of public establishments. In a rich country these things are hardly felt, in a poor one they are regarded as great benefits. Nothing that tends to break the monotony of Irish life and Irish employment can be wisely neglected. There is one grievance which Ireland shares in common with the two other portions of the United Kingdom, of which she may be said to be in some degree at least the author, that is the impossibility which she shares in common with England and Scotland of passing the most necessary bills through Parliament. Take, for instance, the Valuation Bill, a measure which from its importance, and its obvious necessity and justice, would long ago have commanded the assent of any legislature in the world except our own. It may be said, 'Physician, heal thyself.' Give up the inveterate habit of obstruction, and you as well as Ireland shall benefit by the reformation. This may be very true and very telling in the mouth of a smart debater, but, after all, mankind are not to be governed by epigrams, nor is an exposure of the reason why work is not done in itself a sufficient excuse for not doing it. We ought to be able to govern by the means which the Constitution places at our disposal, and the fact that one part of the machine refuses to work, is no excuse for leaving our work undone, but only an incentive to find some other way of doing it. It is a melancholy, but an undoubted, fact, that a certain number of members of Parliament have openly adopted the idea, not only that their duty consists in doing nothing themselves towards discharging the office of a legislature, but that they are bound to exert their utmost efforts in order to make those who are willing to work as useless as they are. As we have no means of getting rid at once of persons who take so singular a view of the office which they hold, the only thing that occurs to us is to find some one who will do the duty for them. As these tactics have rendered it impossible for Parliament to discharge its duties, and as those duties cannot be left permanently undischarged, we must find some other body to do the work. There must be a division of labour, and as we are to have one Parliament which is to do little else except talk, and that for the purpose of preventing work, we must invent some inferior machine which may supply the deficiency.

The New Zealanders have two generals, one to act and the other to talk, and we cannot, we fear, do better than follow their example.

of districts of suitable magnitude, in the hope that, as it has taken the Imperial Parliament six hundred years to discover that it is the duty of a Member of Parliament to do nothing himself and, as far as in him lies, to prevent any one else from doing anything, the ignorance of these new bodies may enable us to get on, for a time at least, with the humbler functions of legislation by local bodies in each county inferior in rank and position but blessed with the quality of doing business. Parliament, even were it inclined to work, is overtaxed, and now that it has pretty nearly struck work altogether, the time seems to have arrived for diminishing the quantity of business which it has determined not to do.

There still remains the question what can be done towards. appeasing the desire of Ireland for Home Rule and giving her as much of it as is consistent with the unity and integrity of the Empire. As we understand them, we apprehend no Home Rule Members desire a total exclusion of themselves from the House of Commons, but only the limitation of their own labours to such matters as concern the whole Empire and not any particular part of it.

We are not sure that we perfectly seize their meaning, and it is just conceivable that any two of them separately interrogated might give a different outline of what they are preparing for themselves and their country. This is not unnatural. Their first business is to demolish, and till that has been done the ideas of reconstruction must necessarily remain in a crude and half-formed state. It is not, as we understand it, so much that they object to legislate for other people as that they will not allow other people to legislate for them.

We beg to draw attention for a moment to those members for Irish constituencies who are not Home Rulers. Out of the Elysian Fields, where the sky is always cloudless, there is no repose so profound as that which these favoured persons seem to enjoy. The worst of being a moderate and reasonable man is that you are perpetually involved in conflicts with those who are extreme and unreasonable. Your repose does not depend on yourself, but on the unruly wills and affections of turbulent persons who are perpetually raising unpopular and embarrassing questions. From this trouble the Conservative and moderate Irish are almost wholly exempt. They have no occasion to say anything. The proposals of the Home Rulers are so startling and so extravagant that the Government of the day is bound for its own credit to deal with them, and there is no occasion for an Irish Member, unless he is fond of leading forlorn hopes, to mix himself in the dispute at all. Thus a totally false issue is raised. The dispute, instead of seeming, as it really is, a controversy between a loose and undisciplined majority and a large minority of Irish Members, is represented most untruly to the country as a dispute between England on the one side and Ireland united on the other. But this misapprehension of the true elements of the disputants and of the dispute is not the whole mischief. The Anti

solid phalanx of English and Scotch Anti-Repealers have no inducement to risk their popularity by violently opposing their countrymen. The strength of the Repealers is in the belief which they as well as their antagonists have that there is not the slightest chance that repeal will be carried. On that point they are perfectly at their ease, and can afford to make many concessions and arrangements which they could not dream of if there was not England to stand between them and their pretended adversaries. It is also very probable that the zeal of many pretended advocates of repeal would abate if they found themselves placed in a position which would make it necessary to take a more active and decided part than is implied in mere acquiescence. We also believe that if by any means the Irish opponents of repeal could be put in the front of the battle, their influence would be used with far more energy than at present, to oppose the election of Repealers. In order, therefore, to yield as far as is possible to the real or pretended wish of Irish members, that they should have a more exclusive part in Irish legislation, we would propose that every Bill brought forward on Irish subjects should, before it is read a second time, be submitted to a committee composed of Irish members only. The House would then have, before it was called upon to decide on any Irish question, the advantage of seeing the opinion of the Irish members of both sides, for or against the measure, and especially of hearing what the Conservative side of the House would have to say for or against it. There would be in fact, sitting not at Dublin but at Westminster, an Irish Parliament composed of 105 members, untainted by any English element or alloy, with the fullest opportunity of considering and debating any Irish question which might be brought before it. We do not suppose that in such a body the time would be consumed in making speeches for the mere purpose of delay, or in reading Blue books. We assume that such a body purified of all English dross would address itself to the subjects before it, and we should thus have all the good without the evil of a repeal of the Union. If this shall turn out to be the case, we shall have gained a most important point. We shall have what we do not get now-both sides of Irish opinion fully and fairly represented, which, we are sanguine enough to think, would be with the Irish as we find it with the English, a long step towards conciliation and agreement. If it should unhappily turn out otherwise, and the Irish should insist on practising against each other the tactics which they have practised with such signal success against us, they will have furnished an unanswerable argument against the repeal of the Union. For what good purpose would be answered by creating a Parliament in which the avowed object would be to talk against time, or rather against each other, in order to prevent the business which they were summoned to transact from being done?

The opinions of such a committee could not fail to have great influence with the House of Commons, especially if it appeared from

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