Local Self-Government means the delegation by the Sovereign, and in England therefore by Parliament, to local bodies, say town councils, county boards, vestries, and the like, of strictly subordinate powers of legislation for definite localities.  The authority possessed by such local bodies extends over definite and limited areas, (which themselves are often created by legislation); exists for definite purposes; is directly conferred or tolerated by Parliament; has no capacity of indefinite extension; and neither comes into competition with nor restrains, either legally or morally, the legislative authority of Parliament.  Logically, indeed, there may be difficulty in drawing the precise line of demarcation between a plan for conferring on Ireland the minimum of legislative independence which could without absurdity be dignified with the name of Home Rule, and a plan for giving to the boroughs and counties of Ireland the maximum of law-making power which could, without fraud upon the intelligence of the English people, be comprehended within the elastic phrase “extension of Local Self-Government.”  But this logical puzzle need give us no trouble; it is based on the fact that every non-sovereign law-making body, whether it be the French National Assembly, the American Congress, or the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Co., belongs to one and the same genus.[2] The casuists of jurisprudence may quibble for ever over the confines between Home Rule and Local Self-Government; men of sense engaged in the consideration of affairs thrust aside such inopportune logomachy, and content themselves with the knowledge that were the Town Council, say, of Birmingham or of Belfast endowed with tenfold its present powers, it would differ essentially from any Irish Parliament which, even though denied the Parliamentary title, should represent the people of Ireland, and should have received the very smallest amount of authority which could by any possibility satisfy Mr. Parnell.  Nor are differences which may not admit of easy definition difficult for a candid enquirer to discern.  A town council, whatever its powers, does not represent a nation, and derives no prestige from the principle of nationality; the feeblest legislative assembly meeting at Dublin would rightly claim to speak for the Irish people.  A town council, whether of Birmingham or of Belfast, springs from and is kept alive by the will of Parliament, and cannot pretend that its powers, however extensive, compete with the authority of its creator.  Should a town council use even its strictly legal rights in a way not conducive to the public interest, Parliament would without scruple override the bye-laws of the council by the force of Parliamentary enactment.  The authority of an Irish representative assembly would from the necessity of things be, if not a legal, at any rate a moral check, I will not say on Parliamentary sovereignty, but assuredly on Parliamentary legislation.  Extended rights of self-government, though given to