Sir Henry James presided last Saturday at the Assembly Room
of the Free-trade Hall, Manchester, in a Conference of the Liberal Unionists of South-East Lancashire, and of the neighbouring divisions of North-East Lancashire and Cheshire. A letter was read, among other°, from Lord Derby, which put the Home-rule issue very plainly. "If once," he said, " an Irish representative body is brought together, no matter under what restrictions or limitations, its members will regard themselves, and will be regarded by the Irish people, as the sole authority competent to make laws for Ireland, and will proceed to make good their claim, by means of a renewed agita- tion, for which their moral position will give them far greater facilities than they now have. In truth, if the word 'nationality,' using the word in a political sense, does not mean independence, I do not know what it does mean. The States of the American Union enjoy large powers of self-government, but nobody talks of the nationality of Massachusetts or New York. My convic- tion is that we have, in the long-run, only two alternatives to choose between,—either to maintain the Union, or to let Ireland go.,,
