A proposed compromise of the Irish difficulty, which is attributed
to Mr. Thomas Lough and is supported by Professor Mahaffy, has attracted some attention during the week. The proposal, in brief, is that for twenty years in the Irish Parliament the Ulster minority should be represented by more members than its numerical strength would entitle it to claim. And at the end of that period no change should be made except by mutual consent or by the British Parliament. If the number of members in the Irish House of Commons were one hundred and sixty-four (as provided in the Horne Rule Bill), seventy seats would be allocated to the minority. Thus the other side would have a majority of twenty-four, while the two parties would be about equal in the Senate. We cannot see anything to recommend this scheme, nor the least prospect of the minority accepting it. The Government would have a show of reason in refusing to accept any " fancy " improvement of their Bill. We admit that there are hundreds of conceivable fancy amendments, such as the one before ua, which would make the Bill better than it is. But there is no reason why the Government should prefer one to another. There is, on the other hand, a really logical and unanswer- able reason for pressing for the exclusion of the homogeneous part of Ulster. And we may add that, for reasons which we cannot repeat now, we are convinced that exclusion is the best policy for the scattered Unionists of the South and West as well as for Ulster.
