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. Though it may be said that the acceptance of the Bill without prejudice would not have stultified the principles already vindicated in a long struggle by the Irish people, the body as constituted, it was felt, would have served the purpose of the Unionist party by dividing without a sufficient _quid pro quo_ the attention of the Irish people from their devotion to the cause for the broad principles of which they have been striving, and there was this further danger that a body so restricted in its scope and anti-democratic in its administration would have broken down in action, and would have in this way provided Unionists with the very strongest possible argument for opposition to a full autonomy. While a certain proportion of Liberals are prepared to admit that the Bill made havoc of Liberal principles there is a Laodicean section who have greatly blamed Irish Nationalists for having refused what was offered them, when having asked for bread they were given a stone. To such people as I have in mind I should like to quote what Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Hartington on November 10th, 1885:-- "If that consummation--the concession to Ireland of full power to manage her own local affairs--is in any way to be contemplated, action at a stroke will be more honourable, less unsafe, less uneasy than the jolting process of a series of partial measures."[28]