To illustrate this still further, I may add that a General Council of County Councils was formed in 1900, for the purpose of promoting a fair and equitable administration of the Act.  In order that the Ulster Councils might unite with the others, it was agreed that politics should be excluded.  But after the election of 1902, that agreement was abandoned; and, rather than take part in what had become a mere political gathering, the Ulster representatives withdrew.  Left to themselves, the Nationalist General Council in 1906 passed the following resolution:—­

“That the Irish people are a free people, with a natural right to govern themselves; that no Parliament is competent to make such laws for Ireland except an Irish Parliament, sitting in Dublin; and that the claim by other bodies of men to make laws for us to govern Ireland is illegal, unconstitutional, and at variance with the rights of the people.”

If such a body as the General Council of County Councils pass a resolution like this, is there much probability that the Nationalist Parliament will refrain from doing the same, should the Imperial Parliament attempt to exercise the power given to it by the present Bill, and to legislate for Ireland?

But again it may be said that though the Councils have thus become political bodies, they have conducted their business so admirably that their conduct is a powerful argument to show that a Nationalist Parliament will be equally practical and liberal.  This is the view put forward by Nationalist orators and their humble follower Mr. Birrell, who in November 1911, informed his friends at Bristol that the Irish had shown a great capacity for local government and that from what people who had seen a great deal of the south and west of Ireland told him there was no fear of persecution or oppression by the Catholic majority of their Protestant fellow-subjects.  In support of this, various facts are adduced, which it is well to examine in detail, remembering the poet’s words that

    “A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.”

One of the greatest powers possessed by the County Councils is the exercise of patronage.  It would probably be generally admitted in any country but Ireland that there, if anywhere, religion and politics should be excluded, and men selected only for their qualifications.  The Nationalists, wishing to demonstrate the fairness of the Councils which hold their views, contrast the bigotry shown by the Unionist Corporation of Belfast with the liberality of similar bodies in other parts of the country.  And certainly the figures they adduce, when addressing audiences in England or writing for English readers, are very striking.  Thus Mr. Birrell said at Skipton in November 1911 that he had been told that in the great Unionist City of Belfast there was only one Roman Catholic in the employment of the Corporation, and he was a scavenger. (It will be observed that here,