in 1900.

But the biggest Parliamentary majorities have limits to their powers.
Crises arise. Accidents happen. There is always a shadow of coming doom
hanging over the most powerful Parliamentary Governments. With it comes
an anxiety to settle matters in their own way, before they can be
settled in a way which they dislike. Thus it is that we find that
between 1895 and 1905, during that ten years of Unionist power, two
great steps were taken towards a peaceful settlement of the Irish
question.

One was the Irish Local Government Act of 1898, which extended to
Ireland the system of local government already granted in 1889 to the
country districts of England. The other was the great Land Purchase Act
of 1903, which carried out Mr. Gladstone's policy of 1886, and set on
foot a gigantic scheme of land-transference from Irish landlord to
Irish tenant. That scheme is still to-day in process of completion.

It is these two Acts which have largely changed the face of Ireland.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Take first the Act of 1898. Up to that year the county government of
Ireland was carried on entirely by a system of grand jurors, consisting
chiefly of magistrates, and selected almost entirely from the
Protestant minority. These gentlemen assembled at stated times, and
settled all the local concerns of Ireland, fixing the rates, deciding
on the expenditure, and carrying out all the local Acts. They formed,
with Dublin Castle, part of the great machinery of Protestant
Ascendancy. Very few Catholics penetrated within that sacred circle.

These gentlemen, even now for the most part Protestants, still hold the
power of justice. But the power of local government has passed from
their hands. Every county of Ireland now has its County Council.
Beneath the County Councils there are also District Councils exercising
in Ireland, as in England, the powers of Boards of Guardians. Neither
the Irish counties nor the corporations of Ireland's great cities have
power over their police. There are no Irish Parish Councils. Otherwise
Ireland now possesses powers of local government almost as complete as
those of England and Scotland.

How has this system worked? In the discussions that preceded the
establishment of local government in Ireland we heard many prophecies
of doom. So great was the fear of trusting Ireland with any powers of
self-government that the Unionists actually proposed, in 1892, a Local
Government Bill, which would have esta