LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT FOR IRELAND.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTAT01."] Sin,—Allow me to express my hearty agreement with your article on "Mr. Balfour's Announcement." You omit to notice one argument against the policy which you deprecate. The attempt to extend local government of the English type to Ireland will confuse the already distracted judgment of English electors. "The Local Government Bill," they will be told, "condemns the Crimes Act : if Irish peasants are fit to elect or to become County Councillors, they are entitled in all cases to exercise the rights of jurymen." The argument is fallacious, but it cannot easily receive a conclusive answer from politicians who have supported a Local Government Bill. Of a sophism which to many Unionists will be strictly "unanswerable," we shall hear a great deal at the General Election. My disbelief in the benefit to Ireland of extending to that country at the present moment "local self-government on the English lines," is not a matter of to-day or yesterday. Not a word I have uttered or a line I have written will be found to countenance what I believe to be a delusion. My incredulity, however, is, I must add, not shared by my Liberal Unionist friends. As I know my opinion is singular, so I hope, though I do not expect, that it will turn out unfounded- -I am, Sir, &e,
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