LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN IRELAND.
E.ARL' RUSSELL has signalised the completion of his eightieth year by the addition of another stone—destined, we are afraid, to be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence —to the huge monumental cairn of political recklessness that he has all his life long been piling up. The letters, pamphlets, speeches, and other manifestoes that the veteran Whig has published would fill a portly volume and tell a singular story. Far more appropriately would the nickname "The Stormy Petrel of Politics" be applied to Lord Russell, than to such a mere Parliamentary brawler as Mr. Bernal Osborne. For Lord Russell has a keen scent for those ques- tions which are on the point of becoming—as our neighbours across the Channel phrase it—" burning," and unless his accustomed sagacity is at fault, his letter to the Times may be taken as a sign that the " Home-Rule " problem will be a favourite subject of debate among politicians of all hues during the Recess. There can be no possible objection to this, for the question certainly needs illumination. But the discussion will evolve heat as well as light, and it is only fair to warn Members that in heedlessly following Lord Russell they may happen to barn their fingers. One thing, however, may be done without running much risk. The opinions, the sentiments, and the practical grievances which array themselves in Ireland on the side of Home Hale may be analysed, and those which it is possible to conciliate by non-revolutionary methods may be separated from the rest. The Nationalist spirit, which dreams of an independent existence for Ireland, and resents the connection with the Empire as more than metaphorically "a foreign yoke," is plainly not to be converted by any plans like Earl Russell's, which are merely disguised municipal changes. But there are other causes of dissatisfac• tion at work in Ireland completely distinct from the Nationalist idea, that nevertheless swell the tide of agitation for Home Rule. There is, for one thing, the dislike of the cost entailed by the necessity for bringing Irish Private Bills before a Par- liamentary Committee at Westminster ; and, for another, a well-founded distrust of the obsolete and one-sided system of county administration. This, in Ireland, where the towns are as a rule insignificant, and the county ratepayers repre- sent the preponderance of wealth as well as of numbers, it a serious evil, and one which a strong Administration might set itself to mend without loosing the foundations of society. For the elective principle has been tried in the local govern- ment of the sister kingdom with very fair success ; the work of the reformed Corporations is done with reasonable efficiency, economy, and expedition ; the Boards of Poor Law Guardians have also deserved credit ; charges of jobbery are rarely made, and are still more rarely justified. But in Ireland the County Administration, with its large revenues and patronage, is still steeped in the feudal traditions, and remains an appanage of the Squires.
The Grand-Juries of Ireland are the last line of fortifica- tions held by the privileged classes. The Protestant squire- archy have seen the Parliamentary franchise, the municipal franchise, the monopoly of the magistracy and of office under the Crown successively wrested from them. They have wit- nessed the deposition of their Church from her political dignity, and have suffered the circumscription of their rights as landlords by an innovating law. But they still hold the counties, and it is certain that they will not relax their grasp without the compulsion of a superior power. An Irish Grand Jury is composed of representatives from the several baronies of the county chosen by the High Sheriff. Two qualifications are exacted,—the one being residence in the barony, the other landed property in the district to the amount of some hundreds a year. A considerable laxity of interpretation on both these points has generally been allowed to the Sheriff, who was not always able in some of the remoter counties of Ireland to find a resi- dent gentleman in each barony. But a more stringent unwritten rule was insisted upon, the exclusion of Catholics from these gatherings of county magnates ; that is, their admission in not more than the proportion of one to eight or nine. To be sure, it was even more difficult to find resident Catholic landlords with the prescribed amount of property than Protestants of similar rank ; but in fact, the Sheriffs seldom exerted themselves to exhaust the list of the former. In later years, when Liberal Administrations and Liberal Viceroys became common, when Catholic magis- trates and Lords-Lieutenant were no longer regarded as poli- tical monstrosities, and when at last even the Beeper of Her Majesty's Conscience in Ireland was a Catholic, a Catholic Sheriff came to be looked upon as a possibility, and it might have been supposed that such a one would gladly give his co-religionists their fair share of power. But Sheriffs and Lords-Lieutenant work, it appears, like Ministers in obedience to the unseen authority of a permanent staff. Clerks of the Crown and Clerks of the Peace are the real vrirepullers, and according to Irish rumour, nominate Grand Juries. It is not surprising that their influence is dominant in the matter of patronage, and that owing their own powers to the good old Protestant order of things, they do their best to exclude the "other side" from a share of the loaves and fishes. An amusing instance of the jealousy with which the Grand-Jury-room is guarded against the entrance of Catholics occurred this year in the county of Cork. A Catholic High Sheriff of more than usual; independence of spirit was in power, and amazed everybody by nominating ten Catholic Grand-Jurymen out of twenty-three. The squires were of course wrathful, andsladly seized hold of the fact that the Sheriff had appointed one or two non-resident and otherwise unqualified persons among the ten newly imported members to punish him for his presumption. Proceedings were com- menced against the High Sheriff before the Judge of Assize, and it was proved that technically he had infringed the law. It was shown at the same time that the legal qualifications of residence and property had not been strictly exacted by his predecessors, whose acts no one thought of questioning, but this of course did not extenuate his offence in the eyes of his prosecutors. To strain the law in order that a good Protestant sheriff might put half a score of sound Protestant if otherwise unqualified landlords on the great Inquest of the county was quite proper and natural, but to give a Catholic sheriff the privilege of law-breaking in like manner on behalf of those of his own creed was manifestly impossible. The illegality of some of the appointments was not seriously contested, and the Judge fined the High Sheriff five pounds, which they be taken as an admission that in judicial eyes the sin was venial.
The subject of contention derives its value from various sources. A position on the Grand Jury is, in the first place, a social distinction of some importance in a society very uneasy as to its own worth, and consequently very suspicious of unaccredited merit. But there are reasons more solid for the avidity with which the privileged class cling to this last relic of their former power. To tax the people without asking the taxpayers' leave is a despotic enjoyment reserved in these democratic days for few aristocracies. To spend the taxes without consulting those who have paid them is pleasant, and may even be made lucrative. Unless Irish Grand Juries are much belied, they are not averse to a little genteel jobbery ; if a gentleman wants a road made to improve his estate, or wishes to dispose of a piece of poor land at a good price, a plan for constructing some useless highway is concocted, and there is seldom much difficulty in getting the scheme passed by a sympathetic Grand Jury, each member of which may want the same sort of favour himself. Then there are the pre- sentments for malicious damages, a fruitful source of bickering in Ireland ; the contracts for public works, the appointments of baronial constables, district surveyors, and other officers, a very nice little nest of patronage. Is it surprising either that the squires should be unwilling to surrender all these advan- tages, or that the Catholic masses should be indignant at an exclusion which has no longer a raison d'être? The plea for the admission of members elected by the case-payers of counties—that is, by the farmers—to the Grand Juries deserves more attention than it has yet received. It is true, it would bring the Protestant and Catholic, the aristocratic and the democratic elements, into contact, and the result would doubtless be hot debates, strong language, and an amount of excitement which Englishmen can hardly believe to be compa- tible with serious attention to business. But this noise would clear the air. It is not found that the periodical outbursts of political ill-temper which make the debates of Irish Town Coun- cils and Boards of Guardians so ridiculous in English eyes, do in the long run generate ill-blood, or seriously obstruct work.
One thing has been proved by the former applications of the elective principle to Poor Law administration in Ireland which it is important to remember. There is no disinclination on the part of the elected Guardians to work with the ex-officio Guardians ; nor is there any reason to apprehend that there would be greater difficulty in getting the representatives of landlords and of tenants to act harmoniously together upon County Boards. The Irish Squires fight for the last inch of monopoly, but when they are fairly beaten, they generally have the good sense to accept the situation. It may be affirmed without hesitation that a good Grand Jury Bill would appease a mass of discontent which at present goes to swell the tide of the Home-Rule agitation, while thirty- two well-organised County Parliaments would deal far more effectively with the real difficulties of local government than Lord Russell's four Provincial Assemblies. After the settlement of the Local Government question, we should still have to reckon with the Nationalist feeling, but that powerful unreasoning sentiment —shall we call it an instinct I—neither Lord Russell nor any of the Home-Rule Constitution-mongers have shown us how to reconcile without granting Independence.
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