Mr. Balfour spoke at Huddersfield on Tuesday, ou occasion of
the opening of the County Conservative Club House, and devoted his speech chiefly to the subject of the Local Govern- ment Bill for Ireland which it is proposed to pass next Session. He said that it would be impossible to satisfy Mr. Gladstone's ideal without having a number of quasi-national Parliaments in all the different divisions of the country, whereas the Government holds that that is the way to divide the country, and not to unite it. If the Central Government is to be cut up into fragments, the breach will gradually widen, and the feeling of patriotism will attach to the quasi-national frag- ment instead of to the national whole. In Ireland it is obvious
that the tendency is to glorify Ireland in its opposition and contrast to Great Britain, and the cry for Home-rule prefers to foster that tendency and strengthen it, and surround it with every condition needful for stimulating it into a passion. Mr. Gladstone holds that the Government of France is too centralised, and that the old provincial life should be revived. But there even Mr. Morley does not agree with him, for he has pointed out that it was one of the great benefits of the French Revolution that it extinguished the old provincial jealousies of France, and welded the country into one whole. The true policy in the United Kingdom, as in France, is to municipalise the local institutions, and not let them become in any sense quasi-national ; but in order to do this you must have local institutions for purely local affairs. That is what the Government desire to give to Ireland, as they have been given to England and Scotland ; but Mr. Balfour admits the danger that in the present state of Irish opinion they may be abused, and would only give them if hedged in by the most elaborate precautions against abuse. Very good ; but is the moment opportune, when Ireland is still simmering with the effervescence of fierce anti-British jealousies ? And how does Mr. Balfour propose to secure that the Gladstonians, who favour these national aspirations, shall enforce, if they come in, the precautions which he has devised, but which they dis- approve ?
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