the state of
business in parliament would permit. We announced our intention to
do this at the very moment when we were preparing to suspend the
Habeas Corpus Act. Since that time we have seen our position in
Ireland immensely strengthened, and the leader of the agitation
has even thought it wise, and has dared, to pursue a somewhat
conciliatory course. Many of his coadjutors are still as vicious,
it may be, as ever, but how can we say (for instance) to the
Ulster men, you shall remain with shortened liberties and without
local government, because Biggar & Co. are hostile to British
connection?

There has also come prominently into view a new and powerful set
of motives which, in my deliberate judgment, require us, for the
sake of the United Kingdom even more than for the sake of Ireland,
to push forward this question. Under the present highly
centralised system of government, every demand which can be
started on behalf of a poor and ill-organised country, comes
directly on the British government and treasury; if refused it
becomes at once a head of grievance, if granted not only a new
drain but a certain source of political complication and
embarrassment. The peasant proprietary, the winter's distress, the
state of the labourers, the loans to farmers, the promotion of
public works, the encouragement of fisheries, the promotion of
emigration, each and every one of these questions has a sting, and
the sting can only be taken out of it by our treating it in
correspondence with a popular and responsible Irish body,
competent to act for its own portion of the country.

Every consideration which prompted our pledges, prompts the
recognition of them, and their extension, rather than curtailment.
The Irish government have in preparation a Local Government bill.
Such a bill may even be an economy of time. By no other means that
I can see shall we be able to ward off most critical and
questionable discussions on questions of the class I have
mentioned. The argument that we cannot yet trust Irishmen with
popular local institutions is the mischievous argument by which
the conservative opposition to the Melbourne government resisted,
and finally crippled, the reform of municipal corporations in
Ireland. By acting on principles diametrically opposite, we have
broken down to thirt