Moreover, the present councils are neither large enough nor small enough for efficiency. A very small council would create great rivalry in its election and would cause a fierce light to beat on all its actions. Under such circumstances corruption would be difficult. But a council of this sort would not be representative of the life it governed. A large council, on the other hand, would have its own kind of efficiency, and would be representative of all the life it expressed. It would naturally have to create its officers of government, from whom it could withdraw the power it gave when they ceased to express its will. Expressing itself by way of debate it would create an interest in local government, and a feeling of general responsibility, that cannot now be said to exist. The subjects debated in the local Assembly would be discussed by the hearthside; the life of the people would be quickened; and they would not reserve all their thought for the larger national questions, but would expend it also on their immediate local interests. Thus again corruption would be made difficult. A field would be offered for the discussion of new ideas of local government, local improvement or trade economy and efficiency, whereas at the present moment local councils are sealed chambers that by their construction can never admit fresh air and are the natural breeding places for corruption. It is easy, and just, to censure corruption in these local bodies, but it is yet more necessary to see that their constitution simply invites corruption, just as it invites their capture by one or two interests that rule them to the exclusion of all other interests. Not only because they purport to represent unreal and arbitrarily distinguished parts of a life that is a fellowship (without even doing that much well), but also because of their very form and constitution, such bodies have reduced the local life of Ireland to a tangle of conflicting and corrupt interests. These two criticisms suggest an obvious remedy. The first need is to restore the life of the community, in a fellowship of town and country, urban and rural, within a given area. The second need is to let that community express its life, and assume control of all its local affairs, in a legislative assembly of not less than fifty and not more than a hundred. The satisfaction of these two needs suggests difficulties that are incidental to each of them in turn as new enterprises in statesmanship. Fortunately, as we are following a historical continuity in the life of a Nation, answers are suggested to both of these difficulties out of the old State, and only require adaptation and re-framing to make them suit modern conditions.