Ireland having been decimated by famine and emigration, it was considered that it would not be unsafe to lower her elective franchise to one of £8 of annual rateable value, more especially as such a proposal tended to conciliate, without concession, the Radical agitators for Parliamentary reform in England. It did not, however, conciliate Mr. Hume, who caustically reminded Sir William Somerville, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, when he introduced the Irish Franchise Bill, that it put the franchise on a narrower basis than that of Cape Colony, and contended that Irishmen should at least be treated as generously as Hottentots. The Bill enacted that instead of each voter being compelled to claim registration, local authorities should make up lists of voters, subject to the usual objections--in other words, that the rate-book should be a self-acting register. The Tories failed in their attack on the Bill in the House of Commons; but in the Lords they succeeded in raising the qualification to £15, and in altering the registration clause so that new voters must each claim to be registered before they were put on the voters’ roll. The two Houses ultimately accepted a compromise. The Government agreed to increase the qualification from £8 to £12, and the Tories agreed to abandon their alteration of the registration clauses. On the 18th of May, Lord John Russell brought in a memorable Bill to abolish the office of Lord-Lieutenant--an office the maintenance of which has undoubtedly given an Imperial sanction to the Separatist principle in Ireland. The idea of the Whigs was that the Lord-Lieutenant was an anachronism. The Minister representing Ireland in the House of Commons, though popularly called Secretary for Ireland, is really and legally only Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. Sometimes he sits in the Cabinet when the Lord-Lieutenant does not, and then he is his master’s superior. The Lord-Lieutenant, argued Lord John, had all the responsibility, but never the freedom of action of a Minister of the Crown, and the abolition of his office would facilitate that blending of the Irish and Imperial administrations, which would go far to destroy the Separatist feeling in Ireland. The Queen was very much inclined to favour this step, and for a curious reason. Her Irish tour had impressed her with the fact that her social influence in Ireland might be turned to good account in winning the hearts of a chivalrous and generous people, thereby converting the golden link of the Crown into a healing institution of conciliation. But it was somewhat embarrassing to all parties for the Sovereign to reside regularly in a country, in which the official head of the State was her own Viceroy. Were the Viceroyalty abolished, the Queen promised Lord John Russell that she would from time to time visit Ireland in State, and keep up the Viceregal Lodge in Phœnix Park as a Royal Palace. As for the business of Ireland, it would,