THE IRISH COUNCIL BILL.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:9 Six, Will you allow me to call attention to a verbal inaccu- racy common both to Irish Nationalists and to Unionists which propagates a good deal of confusion ? It is that the Irish Council Bill brought in by Mr. Brinell is constantly termed the Irish Councils Bill. It is hard to produce a greater difference of meaning by the change in one letter. The Irish Councils Bill would certainly mean, and is probably understood by ninety-nine out of every hundred English electors to mean, a Bill for creating Councils of some kind for different parts of Ireland. It does mean, and is intended to mean in the Bill, a Bill for the establishment of the Irish Council,—that is, for the introduction into Ireland of Irish Home-rule by forming what is miscalled a Council, but is really an Irish Parliament of limited powers. The Bill is referred to in its twenty-seventh clause by its right name: "This Act may be cited as the Irish Council Act, 1907." I have always maintained not only that the Irish Council Act, 1907, would, when the Bill passed into law, have been a Home- rule Act, but was a Bill proposed with very dubious good faith towards those Unionists who understood that in the Parliament of 1906 no measure would be brought forward granting Home-rule to Ireland.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A LA.WYEB.
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