The Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Jackson, made a speech at
Leeds on Saturday which did not look as if he thought the Government was, in Sir W. Harcourt's phrase, dissolving itself as pleasantly as a lump of sugar in a cup of tea. He said he hoped the House of Commons would not separate till it had carried out its programme, and treated the violent and hysterical ridicule with which the Opposition had met the Irish Local Government Bill as absurdly overdone. He re- marked that Mr. Balfour, in his speech at Huddersfield, had given fall and fair notice of the kind of safeguards the Govern- ment would require, and he boldly defended the "Put them in the dock clause " for the suppression of a County Council guilty of flagrant maladministration. He made a good point by referring to the violent demand of the Home-rulers for some minority representation on the Belfast Corporation, in the debate on the private Bill of the Belfast Corporation for taking under their own control a lunatic asylum which is at present a county asylum. The Home-rulers bitterly complained that not one Catholic sits on the Belfast Corporation, and said it would be most unfair to put the lunatic asylum under the control of mere Orangemen. Nevertheless, when the same complaint is made of putting County Councils under the control of mere Home-rulers and Roman Catholics, the latter treat the grievance with scorn as one purely imaginary.
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