Lord Selborne has given a rather cautious reply to a
corre- spondent who asked him his opinion of the promise to introduce next year an Irish Local Government Bill. He says that he has great confidence in Mr. Balfour, a remark in which the -whole Unionist Party, however uneasy they might have been rendered by the prematureness of the measure, would heartily join ; but he goes on to declare " that it is necessary to see in what manner and under what safeguards powers of local government are extended to Ireland before I can form an opinion on (what appears to me to be the really important question) the probable operation of the intended measure for -the purposes for which it will be introduced in exclusion of other purposes foreign to the legitimate objects of local government. The Unionist Party generally may be con- sidered pledged to the principle of giving to Ireland powers of local government similar, so far as circumstances will admit, to those given to England and Scotland ; but I am not -aware that any of them are likely to disregard in the fulfil- ment of that engagement such differences of circumstances as in reason ought to be taken into account." It does not seem to us that this touches the main points, which are the danger of stimulating the harebrained delight in defying the Govern- ment at the very moment when we wish the new peasant- proprietors to be settling down to their duties as peasant- proprietors ; and, again, the impossibility of securing the :application of statutory restrictions on the proceedings of the new County Councils, in case of a change of Government, and the accession of an Administration which would really favour instead of discouraging the renewal of agitation. What we fear is, that before the sedative character of the new Land Law had had time to operate, terrorism would be revived in three-quarters of the island.
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