Mr. Trevelyan's alternative plan for administering Ireland is to have
a Secretary for Ireland in the Cabinet in fall control of the Executive, and to leave him responsible for law and order ; to entrust all local work, like education, public works, and county management, to freely elected public bodies; and to hand over to them a share of the taxes fixed once for all, with power to supplement those resources by rates. He believed Ireland could so be governed, for every friend of order would then support the Government, and he reprobated as of sinister augury the striking passage in Mr. Gladstone's speech in which he said the English people ehraul; back from enforcing order by the only form of
coercion which still remained,—meaning, evidently, military force. The House, though decidedly on Mr. Trevelyan's side, did not appear much struck with his alternative plan,—which, indeed, avoids the most real difficulty of all,—the opposition of the Eighty-six.
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