The Irish Question. With Foreword by Sir Horace Plunkett. (Macmillan
and Co. 6d.)—This able article is reprinted from the December number of the Round Table, where it created much interest. Its main argument, with which Sir Horace Plunkett expresses his complete agreement, is that some system of Federalism is needed to solve the Irish question.
Three national constitutions have been framed in the last sixty years, under which new Dominions have been forged from groups of scattered and often discordant States. . . . The same method cannot be beyond the resources of states- manship in these islands, where the problem is not complicated by great distances or wide diversities of climate and race." Perfectly true, no doubt : only, when the author tells us that the Exclusion of Ulster is a very miserable solution, and one irreconcilable in reason with the terms of the Bill, we have to answer that he misses the point. When the staircase of a house is already alight, it is no use talking about the useful- ness of automatic sprinklers: if you want to put the fire out, you must use the water nearest at hand.
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