Mr. Asquith delivered an able speech at Birmingham on Wednesday,
of which it was the intention to show that the Liberal party has not been guilty of any great apostasy, that its present programme is in perfect keeping with all its old principles. Of course he maintained, therefore, that Irish Home-rule is a mere delegation to Ireland of the right of local self-government, in the same sense in which the municipal incorporation of a city is a mere delegation to it of the right of local self-government. Unfortunately, Mr. Asquith took no notice at all of the elaborate proof which was produced during the discussion of the Irish Home-rule Bill, that the new Parliament which that Bill would have estab. lished in Ireland would not have been, and could not have been, effectually controlled by the Imperial Legislature. Even the authors of that Bill had to protest again and again against the attempt to make such a control effective, and to ask the English people to repose a sort of unreasonable trust in the goodwill and wisdom of the Irish people which the Irish people have never shown the slightest disposition to justify. And as for Mr. Asquith's argument that the disestablishment of the Church in Wales is only a new application of the principles which justified the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, be did not even condescend to notice the argu- ment ment that if you once begin snipping off dioceses from the English Establishment to suit the tastes of particular districts, you can never stop short of throwing the whole English Establishment into the melting-pot in the same way.
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