On Tuesday night Mr. Birrell, in introducing his Irish Council
Bill into the House of Commons, declared that there would be found in it no trace of any proposal to confer legis- lative powers. Again, it did not authorise the levying of a single tax or the striking of a single rate. The powers of the House of Commons were unaffected by it. Yet its object was a matter of supreme importance,—viz., the association of the sentiment of the Irish people with the conduct of purely Irish affairs. Mr. Birrell went on to suggest that those who administered laws passed for Ireland by Parliament were entirely out of sympathy with the Irish. people. Dublin, Castle was switched off from the great current of national life and feeling. There were forty-five different Administra- tive Board, in Ireland, and with eight of these his Bill dealt, —viz., the Local Government Board, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, the Congested Dis- tricts Board, the Commissioners of Public Works, the Com- missioners of National Education, the Intermediate Education Board, the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Department. and the Registrar-General's Office.
