goodwill between rich and poor, are the feelings which make good local
or municipal government possible. There are certain parts of England,
there are larger parts of the United States, where these admirable and
rare conditions exist. Do they exist in Ireland? I need not answer the
question, for if they existed our difficulties in Ireland would be at an
end. If, indeed, there were a genuine desire for Local Self-Government,
expressed by Irishmen themselves, every sensible man would at once
surrender _à priori_ theories in favour of the conclusions drawn by
practical experience. But no such wish has been expressed, and until it
is expressed, a thoughtful observer may fairly believe that Local
Self-Government will not flourish in a country where are presented none
of the conditions on which its prosperity depends, and he may conjecture
that in Ireland, as in France, an honest centralised administration of
impartial officials, and not Local Self-Government, would best meet the
real wants of the people.[3]

The notion that Ireland or any one part of the United Kingdom ought, or
has a claim, to have the same institutions as every other part rests on
a confusion of ideas, and is a false deduction from democratic
principles. It is founded on the feeling which has caused half the
errors of democracy, that a fraction of a nation has a right to speak
with the authority of the whole, and that the right of each portion of
the people to make its wishes heard involves the right to have them
granted. This delusion has once and again made Paris the ruler of
France, and the Parisian mob the master of Paris. The sound principle of
democratic government--and England must, under the present state of
things, be ruled on democratic principles--is, that all parts of the
country must be governed in the way which the whole of the State as
represented by the majority thereof deems expedient for each part, and
that while every part should be allowed a voice to make known its wants,