The San Francisco call., 1898-03-19
THE IRISH
 NATIONALISTS
 DISAPPOINTED J. J. Clancy Hopeful for Local Self
 Government. Believes the Bill Intro duced by BalfOur Will
 Go Through. Pledges Made by Statesmen
 4
Pledges Made by Statesmen Many Years Ago May
 Be Fulfilled.
AIDED BY CHAMBERLAIN.
Members of the House of Commons Expected to Relieve the Country
 From the Minority's Rule.
BY J. J. CLANCY.

DUBLIN, Feb. 2S.-The talk of Dub 1in-and, indeed of Ireland-for the past week has been the local govern ment bill for Ireland introduced into the House of Commons last Monday night by Gerald Balfour, the Chief Secretary for Ireland in the present Government. A measure of the kind had been promised for ten or twelve years by the opponents of home rule the party now in power-so that, prop erly speaking, such a bill ought not to have excited much feeling one way or the other. But the truth is that Irish Nationalists feared and Irish Unionists hoped and half-expected that the pledges of English Ministers on the subject were never meant to be full filled. The consequence is that the full fillment of the pledges referred to has excited immense satisfaction on the one side and on the other feeling of in- dignation and disappointment to which full expression has not yet been given, but of which much will in all probabil- ity be heard before long.
 Before going further it may be well to say broadly and briefly what it is that the Government have proposed, and in order to make so much plain it is necessary first of all to state in out line the existing system of Irish local government. Up to the present the ad- ministration of all the local business in every county in Ireland has been entrusted to and carried on mainly by two sets of bodieS-the Grand Juries and Boards of Guardians. The for mer are entirely unrepresentative. They are summoned to meet twice a year by the Sheriff. who is himself a nominee of I'm n N-b Qr appointed by the Government of the day. As a matter of course the mem bers of the grand juries are usually all landlords or ha1gers-on of the land lord class ,and many of them do not contribute to the taxes (amounting to over million year). which they levy and spend. The Boards of Guardians are half elective and half composed of magistrates who are appointed by the Government, but the elective Guar dians are chosen on franchise which is of such a nature that an average landlord may have six votes to the one possessed by his tenant The whole ex- isting system of local government in Ireland is. apparently. devised for the purpose-and certainly has the effect of throwing all power into the hands of the UniOniSt and landlord minority. It remains to add that the government of cities and towns, which is on a more popular basis, is still regulated by so restricted a franchise that in Dublin with a population of, roughly speaking, 100000 only about 5000 persons have votes for municipal elections.
 It Is now proposed to change all this by transferring to county and district councils elected on a household suffrage all the business of the grand juries, the boards of guardians and subordinate bodies. If this proposal is carried and if the local elections are conducted on cfria hn be in all parts of the land outside Ul- ster, and in all but two or three coun- ties even of that province, to exclude from all these in the management of local affairs the so-called loyal minor ity who have hitherto, as l have ex- plained, had monopoly of power See ing this perfectly clearly, the said mi nority are in a state of fright They are beginning to think that they would hardly be worse off under home rule it. self, and that they have been, to use a vulgar expression, "sold'' by their lead. CTS in England. Yet they can hardly complain of being deceived Last sum mer an announcement was made by MT. Arthur Balfour, the leader of the House of Commons, and the man on whom, in conjunction with MT Cham berlain, they have been accustomed to rely as their best friend. which ought to have put them on their guard He then stated that the Government had determined to do for Ireland what they had two years before done for England and Scotland-that is, to pay out of the imperial treasury half the amount of local rates levied on agricultural land
 thereby, according to their scheme
 freeing the landlords as such from all liability to those burdens. He went on to say that they would take advan- tage of such an occasion to propose a popular system of local government for Ireland which, as the landlords would henceforth be beyond the reach of plunder by taxation, would be as wide and as free as that which has existed for the last few years in Great Brit