Earl Russell has published a letter in the Times, in
Which he virtually, on the ground of the necessity of expediting public business, concedes Home Rule. He says :—" It appears to me that if Ireland were to be allowed to elect a Representative Assembly for each of its four provinces of Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught, and if Scotland in a similar manner were to be divided into Lowlands and Highlands, having for each province a Representative Assembly, the local wants of Ireland and Scotland might be better provided for than they are at present." As Wales must have its Representative Assembly too, and North England, and Midland England, and Eastern England, and Southern England, that is a proposal for changing the United Kingdom into a Federal Republic. It would, no doubt, relieve the central authority of much business, but it would also relieve it of much power also, of how much nobody knows. Each Can- tonal Parliament would try to increase its own authority, and in Ireland all four would combine at once to secure practical or theoretical independence, a national existence which, and not a right to make roads, is what Irishmen thirst for.
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