r of
Belfast, springs from and is kept alive by the will of Parliament, and
cannot pretend that its powers, however extensive, compete with the
authority of its creator. Should a town council use even its strictly
legal rights in a way not conducive to the public interest, Parliament
would without scruple override the bye-laws of the council by the force
of Parliamentary enactment. The authority of an Irish representative
assembly would from the necessity of things be, if not a legal, at any
rate a moral check, I will not say on Parliamentary sovereignty, but
assuredly on Parliamentary legislation. Extended rights of
self-government, though given to every local body in Ireland, would not
affect the relation between the people of Ireland and the Parliament at
Westminster. The very aim of Home Rule, even under its least pretentious
form, is to introduce a new relation between the people of Ireland and
the Parliament at Westminster. The matter may be summed up in one
phrase: Local Self-Government however extended means the delegation,
Home Rule however curtailed means the surrender, of Parliamentary
authority.

[Sidenote: Local Self-Government.]

The distinction here insisted upon is of practical importance, for it is
connected with a question so pressing as to excuse an apparent, though
not more than an apparent, digression.

English Radicals, and many politicians who are not Radicals, hold,
whether rightly or not, that the sphere of Local Self-Government may
with benefit to the nation be greatly extended in England. The soundness
of this view in no way concerns us, and it is a matter upon which there
is no reason, for our present purpose, to form or express an opinion;
they also hope that by a similar extension of Local Self-Government to
Ireland they may satisfy the demand for Home Rule. They conceive, in
short, that it is possible to confer a substantial benefit upon the
Irish people, and to close a dangerous agitation, by giving to Belfast
and to Cork the same municipal privileges which they wish to extend to
Birmingham or to Liverpool. The reasons for this belief are threefold:
that Local Self-Government is itself a benefit; that Ireland ought, as
of right, to have the same institutions as England; that Local or
Municipal Self-Government will meet the real if not the nominal wish of
the Irish people. This hope I believe to be delusive. The reasons on
which it is grounded are--one of them probably, and two of them