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 the Bill would receive the most favourable reception.”  One would like to know how far the leaders of the Irish Party who were taken into the confidence of the Government regarding the provisions of the Bill concurred in this clause.  To anyone acquainted with clerical feeling in Ireland, whether Catholic or Protestant, it should be known that such a proposal would be utterly inadmissible.  But apparently the Government were not warned, although it is a matter of history that the Irish Party entertained Mr Birrell to a banquet in London the night before they went over to Ireland for the National Convention, and it is equally well known, on the admissions of Mr Redmond, Mr O’Connor and others, that they crossed with the express determination to support the Irish Council Bill and in the full expectation that they would carry it.