In a speech, also at Belfast, made at an Ulster
Liberal banquet on Saturday last, Mr. Birrell declared that "had his proposals been accepted—they were not meant to be Home-rule .proposals, they had nothing whatever to do with Home-rule- 'they would have associated the Irish people with the task of Irish administration, and he said unhesitatingly that that was the one thing the Irish people wanted." Is it not astonish- ing that Mr. Birrell, having got so far, does not see that why the Irish rejected his proposals was because the Irish people do not want local self-government but something else,—namely, the thing which Mr. Birrell so naively tells them his proposals did not involve ? What they do want is Home-rule, the dissolution of the Union, legislative inde- pendence, or whatever other alias we may like to apply to the demand for national independence.
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