of a prominent tribune of the people it is strange indeed. There are people who think a royal residence would pacify Ireland, as a child is quieted with a sugar-plum. The fact is that there are some people of high position in Ireland who chafe so much at the Liberal policy of the age that they are ready to ally themselves with any party who will help them to make such a policy impossible for the future. Lord Clancarty expresses the opinions of this class when, in a letter to Mr. Butt, he declares that the 'recent violation of the fundamental condition of the Act of Union by the disestablishment of the Church removes what might otherwise have been, with a member of the Protestant Establishment, an objection to moving for its repeal; but now the Protestants of Ireland are as free as the Roman Catholics always have been to do so.' The pill of socialism and anarchy must be gilded for the wearers of coronets and the holders of confiscated estates: hence all these lucubrations about the power of the Crown and the House of

Lords.

Those who do not desire to be governed from the throne and under the patronage of the aristocracy will be more interested in the proposed formation of the new Irish House of Commons. Mr. Butt wisely dismisses the idea of restoring the electoral basis of 1782. He is not quite so fond of the peerage as to wish to see it nominate the majority of the popular chamber. If, in addition to the county members, members were returned from every town in Ireland having a population of more than 3,000, every district in Ireland would, he thinks, be fairly and adequately represented. Mr. Butt has claimed that his proposal for a new constitution is clear and distinct we may therefore fairly take issue on this question of the borough representation. There are 38 unrepresented towns in Ireland having

populations of more than 3,000. Those who have visited them will know how many of them are fit for the franchise when they hear the names. Fourteen of them-viz. Ballinasloe, Ballyshannon, Castlebar, Cavan, Clonakilty, Kells, Loughrea, Middleton, Monaghan, Mountmellick, Newbridge, Omagh, Skibbereen, and Wicklow-are under 4,000. Ten-viz. Athy, Banbridge, Longford, Navan, Strabane, Templemore, Thurles, Tuam, Tullamore, and Westport are under 5,000. Five-viz. Ballina, Enniscorthy, Mullingar, Parsonstown, and Tipperary-are under 6,000. Three -viz. Ballymena, Carrick-on-Suir, and Nenagh are under 7,000. One, Fermoy, is under 9,000. Two, Newtownards and Queenstown, are under 10,000. Portadown has 10,000, and Lurgan 11,000. These are the figures of 1861, but only the last four named are at all likely to have increased in size or importance. The great suburban district of Dublin is at present unrepresented. Two ancient boroughs have been very properly disfranchised: of these, Cashel has 5,591, and Sligo 13,361. It is evident that the majority of the unrepresented towns of Ireland are simply villages; and, moreover, the population of many of them is a population of very poor people. It has always been a difficulty in framing an electoral system for Ireland to have a basis of election not too exclusively agricultural. Sixty-four Irish Members represent counties; of the thirty boroughs that return the remainder, several are certainly insufficiently populous. There are but twenty towns in all Ireland with populations above 8,000. Five boroughs have less than 5,000, and ridiculous little Portarlington can only muster 2,679. Now what sort of members would these sixty or seventy towns return? Mr. Butt affects to have no fear for the result. Anyone who will give a few hours to study the question,

and consider what must be, from the circumstances of the country, the constitution of the borough representatives of Ireland, will have no fear that in the House of Commons the intelligence and property of the country will be deprived of its just influence and weight' (p. 57). If this means that the principal country gentlemen of Ireland, who are nearly all Conservatives, would be returned by the small towns, which are all Radical, it is a most extraordinary assumption. Many who have studied the question, not for a few hours but for many years, have come to a widely different conclusion. There are still a few close boroughs in Ireland, but they are very few, and the seats are contested. They give us generally men of pleasure and fashion, who make little difference to the country either for harm or good. But the small open boroughs give us something much worse in many cases: London stockjobbers; English dandies, with money and without opinions, who find it convenient to have seats in Parliament; also (a very dangerous and disreputable class of men) lawyers who hope to rise in their profession by playing with treason. Several of the small boroughs are utterly and hopelessly corrupt. It is unnecessary to mention names, but no Irishman need be reminded that there are several places which have escaped disfranchisement simply because there have been no commissions of enquiry. Those which have suffered the penalties of their misdeeds are perhaps not the worst. Now English constituencies are not a bit purer than Irish, but there is one great difference. If an English borough is found guilty, you have only to transfer the seat to some large town, and the constitution is the better for the change. In Ireland a fresh allotment of seats would be difficult to make, for there really is hardly an alternative. The wealth of the country is agricultural, but

we naturally shrink from the notion of a Parliament elected entirely by the peasantry. For this reason there has been no agitation whatever in Ireland for a redistribution of seats. The thing is none the less necessary. Kingston with Blackrock, Queenstown with Passage, would make excellent boroughs. Lurgan, Newtownards, and Portadown would be greatly preferable to some of the existing boroughs. And something might be done in the way of grouping where towns are not large enough to stand alone. Even Mr. Butt does not propose to change the county constituencies.

6

In the Federalist future the Queen is to regain the old prerogative of creating Irish Peers 'which by the way she has never lost. Prerogative is in great favour with Mr. Butt, and its exercise is to be confided to a Lord-Lieutenant appointed as at present, whose ministers-for local affairs only-' would stand in the same relation to the Parliament as the ministers in Canada or in the great Australian colony stand to the Colonial Parliament' (p. 61). It needs no long argument to show how entirely the case of Ireland differs from that of any colony. Our dependencies are only such in name. They are far distant; they are practically self-governed; the colonists are friends and allies rather than fellow-citizens.

Mr. Butt is the most able and prominent member of the Home Government Association, but he is not the originator of the scheme. The true and first inventor and patentee was Daniel O'Connell. Does his imitator consider what it was that gave the old agitation its power? The Liberator always professed to be working constitutionally for the repeal of an Act of Parliament.' His means were the assembling of hundreds of thousands of peasants, poorer and more discontented than those that Ireland now contains. The matter ended

as such a movement naturally would end; the party of action attempted physical force, and the Repeal bubble collapsed. Mr. Butt is probably not bold enough to convoke monster meetings. He shows his courage in another way-by an attempt to give his ideas a definite form. This is what the uncrowned monarch never dared to do, either at Conciliation Hall or in Parlia ment. His legal skill was exerted in driving his coach through the statute law; Mr. Butt's is expended in the far more difficult task of forging a constitution which will hold water. But the basis of the old Repeal agitation no longer exists. The oppressions of 1840 are not carried on now-a-days. The Church Establishment is gone. For three centuries it was a sore place which the agitator could always pinch when he wished to rouse the patient to madness. The Land question is settled, and landlords, even if they were inclined, can no longer commit the injustice of former days. A Roman Catholic holds the Great Seal with general approbation. The profession of the old faith is a qualification rather than a disability for seats on the Bench, and for all the other good things of this life. The census of 1841 showed, indeed, as O'Connell was so fond of saying, that 'we were eight millions;' but it also showed that there were among us three million seven hundred thousand above the age of five years who could not read. Ignorance and a potato diet-that is what we have lost, or are fast losing. The banks are crowded on fair days with farmers, who come to deposit large sums of money. Can it be doubted that, having only learnt lately how to make money, they will soon discover more profitable investments than bank-receipts? Agriculture is improving. Railways are beginning to pay. Salmon are increasing. Wages are steadily rising.

There is a dark side to the picture. It will not do to excuse agrarian outrage, as Mr. Martin does, by a tu quoque. Sheffield was very bad, but the Commission sent down there had only one difficulty in getting evidence the fear which delinquents had of the law. In Westmeath witnesses will not speak because they are afraid of a secret tribunal, from whose sentence the law is powerless to shield them. Still the outrages are few indeed to what they were, and their area is more confined. Time, if allowed to work, will cure these sore spots, as it already has the greater part of the body.

But we must not allow the empire to be dismembered; and nothing less than this is really contemplated. In the Preface to the third edition, Mr. Butt affirms that the desire for national independence will never be torn from the heart of the Irish nation.' Exactly so: that is what the Fenians say. They know what they want, and care nothing for the integrity of the empire. The Fenians will use this Home Government Association, but will not be ruled by it. So far as it plays into their hands it is popular with their sympathisers, but no farther. Mr. Martin and some of his friends were turned out of the Repeal Association in 1846 because they advocated physical force. The abortive rebellion of 1848 was the natural consequence of their opinions. But a successful rebellion would quickly swallow up them and their theories in the general gulf of anarchy.

Mr. Goldwin Smith long since remarked that the disestablishment of the Church would probably make the Irish Protestants 'the most disloyal Irishmen of all.' This has now come to pass, but only to a limited extent, namely, in the extreme party who loved ascendency better than justice. There are men willing to imperil their country and their own property out of mere pique for the loss of those unjust privileges

which they so long and so disastrously abused. The traditions of a great policy, and the possession of illustrious names, may not prevent some of these gentlemen from strengthening the hands of their natural enemies. They are not many in number, or strong in ability. The Laird of Ballykilbeg, who is much the best known as well as the best endowed of the Orange leaders, has been astute enough to keep clear of this bastard Repeal muddle. He knows perfectly well that at the end of seventy years of Union we are not the most discontented, the most distracted, and, with all our great advantages, the poorest country in Europe.' As to our great advantages, what are they? We have little or no coal, and very few mines worth anything. Our climate in general is ill-suited to wheat. If we have some of the finest land in Europe, we have also a great deal of the worst. Our sea-fisheries are improving, but they are far from the London market, and would not be any nearer if the Union were repealed. Without coal, manufactures can never be newly established, except under great disadvantages. It is to farming, and especially pasturage and green crops, that we must continue to devote ourselves. A nation whose staple manufactures are beef, mutton, bacon, and butter, may be comfortable and contented (which is better than much fine gold), but it can hardly be very rich. It is cruelty to tell the people that Government is responsible for the acts of Nature. It was before the Union that English commercial jealousies ruined Irish manufactures. Modern statesmen would restore them if they could, but they cannot. What is the use of crying over spilt milk?

There are plenty of institutions calling for reform in Ireland without pulling down the political structure altogether. What can be worse than the way in which resident

magistrates are appointed? The position is much sought after, the pay being good and the work not overwhelming. On the other hand, the responsibility is great. They control the police, and in Ireland this means a great deal; for our police force is really a gendarmerie-an army of occupation in disturbed districts, and one of observation for those which, though ordinarily peaceful, are subject to occasional fits of warlike fanaticism. Between the English rural policeman, a parochial person on excellent terms with his neighbours, and the Irish constable, drilled like a guardsman, armed with a Snider carbine, paid and directed from the Castle, there is little or no analogy. It may be mentioned, casually, that our large domestic army of men is paid out of the Consolidated Fund. Does Mr. Butt intend to transfer this to the local exchequer, or is he sanguine enough to believe that we shall not require the constabulary when Federalism has suddenly converted us to peaceful ways? In England the county policeman has to deal with thieves and tramps, and such small deer. If there is a murder, everyone is a special constable for the occasion. In Ireland there is happily very little ordinary crime, but agrarian outrage and an occasional conspiracy have to be guarded against. Our rulers have discovered or imagined that the local magistrates, of course usually landlords, are obnoxious to the secret societies, and cannot administer the criminal law with safety to themselves. Or perhaps it is supposed, not without good reason it must be confessed, that at times of great religious and political excitement Protestants and local magnates would not command popular confidence. When we read what Arthur Young says of justices of the peace at the time of his Irish tour, we cannot be surprised that there should be a traditional distrust of the class. It would not

be easy to find a case since the Union of one gentleman challenging another on account of his independent conduct in the magisterial office. At all events everything is studiously transferred to paid officials. And how are these functionaries appointed? For good service as police officers? No: that is but occasionally the case. For proved zeal and ability in the service of the Crown? No: that is seldom considered. How, then, are they chosen? The answer must be, from interest only. Well-connected military officers who retire from the army when they marry are often appointed. Sometimes they do exceedingly well, sometimes very ill. The prompt ness and active habits of a soldier fit him for the disagreeable work of attending fairs which are held at five o'clock in the morning, of keeping the peace at elections, and of going out at night at a summons from the police to take a dying deposition. He is not, however, always so well suited for presiding at a petty sessions bench. A barrister, on the other hand, is likely to have acquired sedentary habits. Then there are a good many who are made resident magistrates because they are fit for nothing else. People in England ought to know that in a part of the kingdom where paid magistrates do most of the work, and are trusted with all the authority, fitness for their posts is one of the very last things consulted at their appointment. It is quite certain that the peace of many districts is practically in the hands of men who, either from original incompetence or from age, are perfectly unable to manage them. We may, however, be tolerably confident that if these appointments were controlled by a local legislature, they would be more than ever the rewards for political or personal services.

Then as to the local taxation. It is in a very absurd state. The Sheriff is appointed by the Judge

of Assize. He appoints the Grand Jury, and that body administers the county funds. This feudal House that Jack built does not shelter jobbery as it did before the Union; but the system is still an extremely unsatisfactory one. No financial authority at all exists from one assize to another. It would be very much conducive to economy in other matters if the preliminaries of private legislation were carried on in Dublin instead of in London. There is no reason why parties interested in railway or gas bills should have to drag their witnesses before a committee at Westminster, when a permanent court would do the work much better at home. This of course would have to be decided on more general grounds, but the new mode of trying election petitions is a precedent pointing in the direction of decentralisation.

More important by far than any other Irish question is that of National Education. A really efficient system would do more for us than anything. But that potent instrument of civilisation has not yet been forged. Much has been done, but more remains to do. The great difficulty is the pressure of fanaticism on either side. Ireland, torn into factions, has not spoken at all on the question. If her representatives were agreed upon any basis of arrangement, the Imperial Parliament would probably adopt it without much difficulty. It is much easier, as well as more exciting, to frame new constitutions than to consider practical matters and confront practical difficulties.

Those whose energies scorn to be confined to utility may perhaps be convinced by the opinion of the highest living authority on theoretical politics with regard to the question of Federalism. The reputation of Mr. Mill is deservedly very high in Ireland. His popularity is, indeed, largely owing to a pamphlet which he unfortunately published at the height of the Land