died in Committee, and it had this
merit, at least, that it did carry out the Liberal promise of being
"consistent with and leading up to a larger policy." Its purpose,
broadly stated, was to consolidate Irish administration under the
control of an Irish Council, which would be elected on the popular
franchise. It contained no provision for a Statutory Legislative body.
It was to confine itself to the purely administrative side of
Government. The various Irish administrative departments were to be
regrouped, with a Minister (to be called Chairman) at the head of
each, who would be responsible to the elected representatives of the
people. The Council was to be provided with the full Imperial costs
(the dearest in the world) of the departments they were to administer,
and they were to receive in addition an additional yearly subsidy of
L600,000 to spend, with any savings they might effect on the
administrative side on the development of Irish resources. Finally,
this limited incursion into the field of administrative
self-government was to last only for five years. Appeals to ignorant
prejudice were long made by misquoting the title of the Irish Council
Bill as "The Irish _Councils_ Bill"--quite falsely, for one of
its main recommendations was that the Bill created _one_ national
assembly for all Ireland, including the Six Counties which the Party
subsequently ceded to Carson. Do not these proposals justify the
comment of Mr O'Brien on them?--"If the experiment had been proved to
work with the harmony of classes and the broad-mindedness of
patriotism, of which the Land Conference had set the example, the end
of the quinquennial period would have found all Ireland and all
England ready with a heart and a half for 'the larger policy.' There
would even have been advantages which no thoughtful Irish Nationalist
will ignore, in accustoming our people to habits of self-government by
a probationary period of smaller powers and of substantial premiums
upon self-restraint."

Unfortunately, in addition to having no legislative functions, Mr
Birrell's Bill contained one other proposal which damned it from the
outset with a very powerful body of Irish thought and influence--it
proposed to transfer the control of education to a Committee
preponderatingly composed of laymen. When dropping the Bill later Sir
H. Campbell-Bannerman declared: "We took what steps we could to
ascertain Irish feelings and we had good reason to believe that t