nder the Act as passed, the remedy which lies, is for the
Treasury to stop administrative payments to local bodies, an action
which would bring Government to a standstill and plunge the country
into disaffection. Mr. T.W. Russell has long advocated the creation at
Westminster of a Grand Committee of Irish members to deal with the
Estimates and with Irish legislation; and, as if there were not a
plethora of proposals for the modification of the present system of
Government, the plans of the Irish Reform Association have for the last
three years been before the country.

The object of their first proposal is the creation of a Financial
Council to which the control of Irish expenditure should be handed by
the Treasury with the object of making it interested in economising in
finance for Irish purposes.

Their proposal with regard to Private Bill Legislation is merely that
the principle adopted in 1899 in the case of Scottish Private Bills
should apply to Ireland, and this has not met with much objection. Under
it local inquiries, which are at present conducted at Westminster, would
be carried out in the localities affected, with much saving of expense;
and it is only necessary to add that as long ago as 1881 a Bill was
introduced to transfer from Westminster to Ireland the semi-judicial and
semi-legislative business entailed in the passage of Private Bills
through Parliament.

The statutory administrative council proposed by the Irish Reform
Association was to consist of thirteen members, of whom six were to be
elected by the County Councils, six were to be the nominees of the
Crown, while the Lord Lieutenant, who was to preside as chairman, was to
have the right to exercise the privilege of a casting vote. From a
democratic point of view such a body would be an assembly _pour rire_,
and would only serve to entrench the present bureaucracy more securely
by the semblance of representation which it would offer, while retaining
the power of the purse in the hands of a body carefully constituted in
such a way that the small minority who comprise the ascendancy faction
in the country would be permanently maintained in a majority on the
council. A great deal more could be said in defence of another proposal
which has been mooted--namely, that the principle of proportional
representation should be adopted. In a country like Ireland, where the
dividing line between the two great parties is unusually wide, with an
ordinary syste