Sir J. C. Dalrymple Hay, the well-known Member for Wigtown,
has published in the Times a formal plan for the reorganisation of Ireland. He would release the suspects, and grant Home- rule by creating four Provincial Parliaments, each with the powers of the Legislature of the Isle of Man, the control of customs and Imperial business being vested in the Secretary of State. He would at the same time sweep away" the Castle" en bloc, suspend trial by jury, try every suspect by a Special Commission of the ablest Judges, and direct the General Commanding-in-Chief to enforce the law,—we presume, by military means. We wonder how long Sir John Hay supposes his local Parliaments, with their nearly unrestricted authority, would stand that ? The notion of Provincial Councils with extensive powers is not new, but as a substitute for Home-rule, it is open to this serious objection, that it in no degree gratifies the Irish desire for nationalism. The root of the Home-rule feeling is the desire for distinction, for separate visibility, which possesses every Irishman like a passion. The Irish want Ireland to be something in the world, even more than they want her to be self-governed. The desire is perfectly natural, and if Ireland were only five hundred miles off, would have the sympathy of every English- man. Unhappily, the island is not twenty miles from the Scotch coast, and the Irish conscript army of 150,000 men would be a permanent danger.
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