A Home-Rule Conference has been sitting this week in Dublin,
advocating a federation between Great Britain and Ireland in place of the present Union, and demanding for Ireland her separate Houses of Commons and Lords. In fact, what appears to be desired is a " personal Union," supplemented by an Imperial Legislature here for the purposes of Imperial policy and finance. The Conference upon this wild scheme has not been particularly unanimous, the O'Conor Don, for instance, suggesting that it will be hard to make Irish nobles who don't wish for a separate Irish House of Peers, come and sit in it,—and the unpopularity of Home Rule with the Protestants being a powerful and admitted difficulty ; but none of the speakers seemed to see that the chief difficulty of all is this,—that we English would much
rather separate from Ireland altogether than have recourse to this feeble and mischievous federation, and.thatrthe 'Home Rulers themselves won't hear of isolation. We olaaerve, by the way, with some surprise, a report in Idle Manchester Guardian, of Thursday, that Mr. F. H. O'Donnell, "of, the $peciater, London," was a member of the Home-Rule Conference. fiNre need not say that we have sent no delegate to a Conference convened for a purpose which we regard as at once wild and mischievous ; nor has Mr. O'Donnell represented this journal anywhere, on any occasion whatever.
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