what it is in England. There will be no swinging of the pendulum, no alternation of the "Ins" and "Outs." The Government of the country will be fixed in the hands of the majority party, and there will be no change to be looked for, except through a revolution, which, if it comes, can only be achieved by overthrowing the ascendancy of the Catholic Church.
In view of this permanent disproportionate division of parties amongst the people of Ireland, and the consequent impediment to the working of the strict party system, it is desirable that anything that could mitigate this evil should be adopted. The application of the principle of Proportional Representation to all elections in Ireland would have, to some extent, the effect of making the Irish Parliament more representative of such independent opinion as may exist, either within or apart from the two extreme political sects which now divide the electorate, and would tend to make the Parliament more of a deliberative Assembly, and less of a mere machine for registering the foregone conclusions of the majority. The principle of proportional representation has been recognised in the Act of 1914, in a half-hearted way, by the method of the single transferable vote: but it has been unaccountably limited to the forty members of the Senate who are to be elected by the four provinces, and to such members of the Lower House as are to be elected by constituencies having three or more members, thus making it apply to seven of the twelve borough constituencies, and to two only (North and South Dublin) out of the eighty-five county constituencies. This is a palpable absurdity, and the more glaring in that to extend the system at any future time would involve the recasting of the schedule of distribution over the whole country. To make the system effective, the constituencies should be grouped so as to give not less than five or seven representatives to each.
As the federalisation of the United Kingdom cannot be brought about without considerable lapse of time, whilst the settlement in Ireland is very urgent, involving
