ts, Mr. Balfour, speaking on the first reading of
the Council Bill, was constrained to admit that it bore no resemblance
to any plan which the Irish people had ever advocated, and he went on to
declare his inability to see how by any process of development it was
capable of being turned into anything which the Nationalists ever
contemplated. The unanimity with which the Bill was repudiated by
Nationalist public opinion in Ireland is to be seen from the fact that
not a single voice was raised on its behalf at the National Convention,
comprising 3,000 delegates, which was the most representative meeting of
any kind which has ever been held in Ireland. The reasons for its
rejection are to be read in the light of the repeatedly expressed
opinions of the more radical section of the Ministerial Party, to the
effect that a bolder and more comprehensive scheme might have been well
introduced without any infringement of the election pledges of the
Government. Under Clause 3 the Lord Lieutenant, an officer under the new
_regime_, as now, of a British Ministry, would have been empowered to
act in defiance of the opinion of the Council either by modifying their
resolutions as to Executive action or by overriding them by orders of
his own, or rather of the Ministry of which he was a member. On points
such as this dealing with the constitution of the assembly, Mr. Redmond
was able to inform the Convention that no amendments would be accepted
by the Government, and experience has taught Irishmen that although
these powers might generally, under a Liberal Government, be exercised
in a legitimate manner, under a Unionist Lord Lieutenant they would be
exercised in a despotic fashion, just as, in the words of the Estates
Commissioners themselves, the instructions issued by the Lord Lieutenant
in February, 1905, were designed "seriously to impede the expeditious
working of the Land Act of 1903." Great objection was taken to the fact
that the resources of the Council would be such as to effect little
administrative improvement, since the departments under its control were
the very bodies which demanded increased expenditure, while it left
untouched the Police, the Prisons' Board, and the Judiciary, the
reckless extravagance of which afforded obvious sources from which, by
modification of their wasteful expense, one could make large economies
for the benefit of those portions of the Irish service which at the
present moment are starved.

Tho