Mr. Balfour's speech at the Conservative banquet at Ealing, on
Wednesday, was full of good points. After remarking that the Bill was "a Bill for the worse government of Great Britain," he went on to show that the clause forbidding the raising of a military force would not prevent the enrolment of Volunteers in accordance with the precedent of 1780. The proposal to make a Constitution in which the popular assembly "shall have within it two kinds of majorities," was one which no human being had ever made "in all the experiments in Constitutions which the world has seen." If you have two majorities and two systems of taxation, you must have two Budgets, two Committees of Ways and Means, and two Appropriation Bills. Home-rule would drive capital out of Ireland, and Irish labour would follow that capital to England, and increase the present competition of Irish labour. The diffi- culty of collecting the taxes due in Ireland would be enormous. Ireland is at present the paradise of smugglers ; what would it be under Home-rule P Ireland's quota was much too small. If the basis of wealth were taken, Ireland should pay £1,000,000 more than it is proposed she shall pay. If population is taken, she would pay £6,000,000 more. If these two are combined, she would pay 23,000,000 more a year than under the Bill. We were then called upon to make Ireland a present of some 2100,000,000, as well as to give her Home-rule. "The Irish are to tell us by what administrations we are to be governed ; the Irish are to control our taxation ; the Irish are to manage our elections ; and in order to remunerate them for this thankless task, we are going gratuitously to hand over 100 millions of our money to their pockets." The speech was an excellent one, and the points should be pressed home by the minor speakers of the party.
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