A glance at the new scheme shows that the proposal is at once disingenuous and fantastic. The Prime Minister shrinks from admitting the nature of the work he is engaged in. He breaks up the unity of the Kingdom, but he will not allow that his Bill involves the repeal of the Union. But whatever quibbles may be indulged in, the main principle of the Act of Union, that Ireland should be represented at Westminster is swept away. As Irish nationality is not to be ignored, it finds expression in a Parliament in Dublin; but Ireland is to pay a contribution towards the debt and towards public defence, and in the application of this money is to have no voice. Thus we have Irish nationality started with machinery which sets aside the first principle of free governments, that there should be no taxation without representation; and the internal arrangements of the Dublin Parliament are equally suggestive of confusion in the future. The Prime Minister does not ask Parliament to disregard the risks to which property and loyalty will be exposed in the Dublin Assembly, and he proposes to satisfy our conscience by giving them the security of representation in Dublin by a special Order. The Dublin Parliament is divided into two Orders, each of which shall have a veto on the legislation of the majority. The First Order consists of persons who must be possessors of 4000l. or an equivalent income. That is their personal qualification, and they are to be elected by occupiers rated at 25l. Property qualification for Members of Parliament was abolished in England some thirty years ago. Rating, as a qualification for electors, has been abandoned in a series of deliberate public measures from 1866 to 1885; but it is these old clothes of English Parliaments which Mr. Gladstone offers to his new nationality. Why should these expedients be adopted in Ireland? Checks upon legislative action, a second Chamber, a Second or a First Order, are questions upon which theorists are divided. They are certainly not questions which have occupied the National League. These 'Orders' in Parliamentary life are not native Irish ideas. These reproductions of quaint customs, such as we might find in some ecclesiastical synod, or in the village organization of some old Scandinavian community, are England's guarantees for the security of property in the Sister Island. That Island, we know, has been abandoned for some years to the National League, whose power was founded on their opportunities of excommunicating any one who did not subscribe to their funds and obey their decrees. The principle of the National League was that property in land was an outrage on Irish opinion; and we are asked to believe that this American-Irish organization, clothed with Parliamentary power in Dublin, will be kept in check by a device, which has no sanction in ancient tradition, in local sympathy, in recognized opinion. The First Order in the new Chamber will be so many people marked out for plunder.