Mr. Chamberlain on Tuesday addressed a Unionist meeting at Ba,cup,
in Lancashire, a town in the Rossendale constituency, represented by Lord Hartington. He enlarged upon the duty of giving Ireland a system of local government, and praised municipal government as a matter of much more immediate importance to the working classes than even political self- government. What did it matter to a man whether the Church was disestablished or not, in comparison with the question whether the street in which he lives should be so badly drained that all his children succumb to typhoid-fever ? However, there is a step above mere municipal self-govern- ment,—namely, provincial self-government, such as we have given to the different Canadian Provinces ; and that is the form of self-government which Mr. Chamberlain continues to advocate for Ireland, the more because it would solve the Ulster difficulty in the right way, and also settle the national question in the right way,—that is, by denying to Ireland the status of a separate nation. No doubt; but is not that just the reason why it is useless and almost irritating to press such a solution on Ireland now To say, Because you want one thing, we will give you another which you don't want,' is a capital mode of tantalising Ireland, but hardly of gratifying or satisfying her. If we offer an angry man what he despises instead of what he claims, we are sure to make him all the more angry, and it is not clear what good we do in any other way. But Mr. Chamberlain has got provincial government for Ireland on the brain, and will urge it upon her willy-nilly.
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