Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question
History
Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Irish question
"2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the
Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last
proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to
be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal
acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient
security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious
difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there
is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.
"3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not
vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is
really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each
province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all
matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in
which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of
course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as
that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the
extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the
masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central
assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring
(as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the
circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a
part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also,
much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the
present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business,
together with such other matters as the central legislative might think
fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[52]
Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin Smith anticipated
Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on
the road to an Irish Parliament.
* * * * *
MR. DICEY.
A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper Union,"
than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more
effective shots into Mr. Pitt's unfortunate arrangement of 1800.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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