Page:The Irish Cause and "The Irish Convention".djvu/5

 ever witnessed in Ireland; you had scarcely a man in the whole country with you north or south except the place-hunters, and the place-hunters very quickly took to their heels. That lively experience occurred only nine or ten months ago. Yet, here we have, or rather up to to-night had, the Prime Minister coming up again to offer us a Bill which in a slightly more gilded form is the self-same nostrum of Partition which was rejected last summer as a burning insult by almost every honest man of the Irish race.

The only difference between the two schemes which is worth a moment's discussion is the pretext that some shadow of national unity is preserved to Ireland by this so-called Council of Ireland. That device does some credit to the Prime Minister's ingenuity, but, Sir, it is of no more real value as a preservative of the integrity of Ireland than if you were to put in a proviso that the Hon Baronet and his Ulster men might still travel up to Dublin to attend the Punchestown races. The work assigned to this Council is too trivial for words. Indeed it could absolutely do no work at all without the leave of the Hon. Baronet and his Ulster Party in this House, who would command a majority of fifteen to six Nationalists in the Ulster delegation. The proposal is luckily too insignificant to be really irritating. Otherwise the only effect could be to add an additional complication by setting up a new and irresponsible dual control in Dublin to review and criticize every act of the unfortunate mutilated Dublin Parliament. I cannot suppose the Prime Minister really desired to add insult to the injury of the exclusion of the six counties by establishing the Ulster Party in this House in addition as a rival authority to snub the unfortunate Dublin Parliament at every turn. But the truth is, the whole thing is 5