IRELAND

Since the unhappy Easter Rebellion of 1916, the Irish question has steadily grown in importance; and as the need has grown more evident for an immediate solution of the problem, the problem has apparently grown more and more difficult to solve.

A practical idea-so far as it goes-is embodied in the latest bill brought forward by the British Cabinet. Mr. Lloyd George proposes two separate Irish Parliaments, one for the North and one for the South. So long as these two Parliaments exist apart, their fields of action are very rigidly circumscribed; but in case they can agree to form a united legislature for the whole country, a some what wider autonomy constitutes their reward. This principle seems fundamentally sound. Irish union is a thing that only Ireland can achieve, and only by peaceful means. Some solution must be adopted without delay, as otherwise the provisions of the 1914 measure,-satisfactory to no one,-automatically go into effect.

But the Prime Minister's scheme hardly goes far enough. Sinn Fein agitators claim-and with a fair degree of reason-that this last bill is only a sham. It is certain enough that under its provisions neither the two divided legislatures, nor the single united one, are entrusted with anything like a sufficient degree of responsibility. Of the total amount of the Irish revenues, Ireland has control of less than one tenth. The police, always such a fertile source of grievance, remains in English hands. These are but two instances of how what might appear at first to be a real grant of power is nibbled down to nothingness. There can be no objection to allowing North and South, under separate governments, a much larger amount of freedom than Mr. Lloyd George seems ready to give Neither can there be much objection to granting Ireland practically complete autonomy, if once she can unite in demanding it; and this the Premier's bill doe not propose to do.

The solution of the Irish problem is to be sought under the general plan of the Cabinet's proposal, but with the terms of that proposal widely extended. England has already solved, in a somewhat similar way, the problem of two apparently irreconcilable groups in the same dominion. A grant of autonomy under separate legislatures solved the difficulty, in the last century, of the French Canadians in Quebec and the English inhabitants of the other Canadian provinces. The case of Ulster and the rest of Ireland is similar. If the Prime Minister's plan were extended, allowing Ireland a much wider degree of responsibility until the two Parliaments agree to unite, and granting complete autonomy after this Union is achieved, we believe the Irish question would speedily be solved,-or better still would solve itself.