of the present District Hospital Committees, strengthened by nine members appointed by the County Council; and that the Chairman of the Board of Guardians should be the Chairman of the District Hospital Committee.  The Royal Commission, on the other hand, votes boldly for the abolition of the Boards of Guardians.  It argues that, if we are to have a County system of institutions maintained by a County rate, we must adopt the logical consequence that the County Council which strikes and collects the rate should have the direct or indirect management of the institutions.  It proposes that the Council should appoint a statutory Committee (one-half to be taken from outside its own members), to be called the Public Assistance Authority, and that this Authority should manage and control all the institutions in the County.  The Philanthropic Reform Association, which has given much study to this question, suggests a via media between the two official schemes.  It recommends that all the institutions should be controlled by the County Council, through Committees directly responsible to it, to which persons of experience from outside should be added.  Such committees need not be elected by the Poor Law Guardians, as recommended by the Viceregal Commission, or by the Statutory Committee of the County Council, as recommended by the Royal Commission.  The Association desires, and it has a large volume of Irish opinion behind it in this, to minimise the existing powers, and reduce the numbers, of the Poor Law Guardians.  It is also very earnestly impressed with the need of bringing women into the Poor Law administration.  In this it is absolutely right.  The Women’s National Health Association and the United Irishwomen have demonstrated triumphantly the value of women’s services in improving the social, economic, and sanitary conditions of rural life in Ireland.  A recent Act of Parliament qualifies women for election to the Irish County and Borough Councils.  No great reform of the Poor Law system can be effective without their aid.  The Unionist Party will only be acting consistently with its social ideals if it encourages, by every means within its power, an Irish feminist movement, full of hope for the country and wholly dissociated from party politics.

Any thorough reform of the Irish Poor Law system will demand an increased expenditure of Imperial funds.  The growing severity of Irish taxation under recent Radical budgets forbids the possibility of addition to the ratepayer’s burdens.  The anomalous distribution of the grants in aid of Irish local taxation has done much to complicate the Poor Law question.  The Royal Commission reported that “no account whatever is taken of the burden of pauperism, the magnitude of the local rates, or the circumstances of the ratepayers and their ability to pay rates in the different areas.”  Under this system the minimum of relief is extended to the districts in which the weight of taxation is most oppressive.  The Commission proposed a scheme