themselves in the grade below it. The administration of local justice, of local finance, and other local affairs, requires the hand of the reformer even more urgently than in England. Such minor matters as, though of small account in themselves, would help to conciliate Irish feeling, ought not to be neglected. Those are not wrong who have urged that, with parity of qualifications, Irishmen (when not partisans) should have the preference for Irish appointments; and there is no good reason why the heir to the throne should not, during part of every year, reside and hold a Court at Dublin. Those purely material improvements to which voluntary enterprise is not adequate, should, with due consideration and proper precautions, receive help from the State. The possible consolidation of Irish railways under State management, or under a single company by concession from the State, is already engaging the attention of our public men; and advances for drainage, and other improvements on a large scale, are, in a country so poor and backward as Ireland, economically admissible: only not on the plan hitherto adopted, of lending to the landlords, that the entire benefit of the improvement may accrue to their rents. It is scarcely credible that a large extension of such advances has within the last few weeks been publicly propounded as a remedy for Fenianism and all other Irish ills, and that a bill for that purpose, promoted by the Government, is actually before Parliament. We have heard of people who would have cried fire during the Deluge: these people, if they had lived at the time of the Deluge, would have proposed to stop it by turning on a little more water.
But none of these things—not even the cashiering
