LORD JOHN RUSSELL ON HOME RULE.
[To TI111 EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.".1 SIR,—The following expression of the mature judgment of a very eminent Liberal statesman seems worth quoting. In the "Recollections and Suggestions" of Earl Russell (Longmans, 1875) he gives his opinion on Home Rule. Admitting that there would be advantages in delegating some of the work now done by Private Bill legislation to local boards be goes on thus r- " It is, however, useless at present to discuss the project of pro- vincial corporations. The favourers of 'Homo Rule' in Ireland have declared very distinctly that what they propose is to convert the legislative Union of England, Scotland, and Ireland into a Federal Government on the model of the old Republic of Holland, or the modern Federal Union of the United States of America. This would be to open a source of civil war over England and Ireland, not against law, but by virtue of law, owing its authority to the Imperial Parliament itself. No matter how well devised the restrictions which might be framed to prevent the province of Ireland encroaching on the central power the earliest efforts of a popular demagogue at Dublin would be directed to the enlarge- ment of local privileges, to the absorption of one part after another of the central authority by the local assemblies. The taxes, the poor rates, the funds for education, the private property conse- crated by the Act of Settlement, the right of Protestants to their churches and chapels, nay, the privileges of Protestants to enjoy their own places of worship end their own religious ceremonies, would all be matters of dispute, and the Home Rulers,' to whom Grout Britain would have given power, would then throw in the tooth of their partners in London the concessions which had been made by themselves " (pp. 352-53).
Lord Russell's finding, when all the facts are fully con- sidered, is this : " Home Rule must be refused in as peremptory a manner as the repeal of the Union was rejected by Lord Grey and Lord Althorp in 1830."—I am, Sir, &c., L.
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