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FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. programme for so many years, Liberals are agreed, and to secure the passing of those reforms all sections of the Liberal party might work together. Thus from a party no less than from a national point of view it is desirable that domestic questions and Imperial questions should no longer be submitted to the electorate in the same confused issue.

To turn to objections which may be urged against the policy here advocated. There is no doubt that if Scotland demanded Home Rule there would be little objection from the average Englishman to meeting her wishes. If there was an effective demand in England for a local legislature to deal with English affairs the demand would be granted to-morrow. But with Ireland the case is different. The present attitude of the Irish party, their openly avowed hostility to this country, especially as regards the war in South Africa, and the fear that the grant of powers of self-government would only lead to disorder, make many Liberals doubtful of the expediency of raising the question of Home Rule. But whether we like it or not the question must be faced. The Irish party is again a united and vigorous Parliamentary force, determined to use every means to compel attention to the Irish demand. No Liberal can contemplate with equanimity the possibility of governing Ireland indefinitely in opposition to the wishes of the majority of the Irish people.

In the utter selfishness of our treatment of Ireland in the past; in the fact that while the reign of Queen Victoria and the era of free trade have been a period of industrial and commercial prosperity for Great Britain, the population of Ireland, under the same free trade policy which has been so beneficial to us, has 61