In a very different tone and spirit is an address
delivered last week to the Leeds Junior Liberal Association by Mr. Albert Itutson, in answer to Mr. Albert Dicey's book on "England's Case Against Home-rule." Mr. Rntson had evidently studied thoroughly, and we may even say assimilated, Mr. Dicey's book and the French work on Ireland by Gustave de Beaumont, on which Mr. Dicey relies for a portion of his ablest chapter ; and we think it clear that if Mr. Batson saw the least chance of in- stalling in Ireland a government such as we have in India, he would prefer that solution to Home-rule. Not seeing any such chance, however, he puts the case for Home-rule in its best form. Admitting, though somewhat minimising, all the vast differences between the case of Ireland and the case of one of our Parliamentary Colonies, or the case of Austria and Hungary, he still thinks there is salvation for Ireland in Home-rule, though he insists in the strongest manner, with Mr. Morley, that the land question ought to be settled before Home-rule is given. But is not that reducing the difference between him and us to a question of time and fitness ? We, too, have admitted that if, after the agrarian question had been settled, and Ireland pacified so far as the war of classes is concerned, she still remained politically discontented and unreconciled, we should have no objection to reconsider the demand of a then united people. But while the people are fiercely divided, while the agrarian question is still unsettled, while no one knows what the consequence of settling the agra- rian question might not be in relation to the reconciliation of Ireland to a Parliament in which she is over-represented, it does seem to us the most singular of all feats of statesmanship to hurl this apple of discord among us as it has been hurled.
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