Manawatu Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 21st MAY, 1875.] WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 1921. THE IRISH ELECTIONS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XII, Issue 1807, 4 May 1921, Page 4

Manawatu Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 21st MAY, 1875.] WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 1921. THE IRISH ELECTIONS.

The Home Rule Act of 1920 (ionics into operation this week, and elections for the now Parliaments will take place at an early date. The Act, though practically conferring self-government upon Ireland, falls short of the requirements of the Sinn Feincrs, because it divides the country into two separate States and gives no control over the Customs. In the present disturbed condition of Ireland, the elections will probably prove something in the nature of a farce, for more than half the people will abstain from voting. The Home Rule Act, it may be mentioned, sets up two Parliaments, of two Houses each, one at Dublin and one in Ulster. The Lower House in each case, by the way, and the Northern Senate, arc to be elected by proportional representation. The work of the two Parliaments will be co-ordinated, by a Council of Ireland representing the whole country, consisting of a president appointed by the King and twenty members delegated by each of the two Parliaments. There, is also an important provision by which, in place of this council, the two existing Parliaments may decide to set up one Parliament for the whole of Ireland. The matters reserved to the Imperial Parliament include the Crown, peace and war, foreign affairs, forces of the Crown, titles, treason and naturalisation, trade outside the area of each Parliament, submarine cables, wireless telegraphy and aerial navigation, and temporarily, control of the police, the post office, and the land purchase Acts. Customs and excise are reserved until the date of a union between North and South, when the question will be reconsidered. It will thus bo seen that the powers of self-government granted to the Irish Parliaments arc considerably narrower than those enjoyed by the Dominions. Eighteen millions a year ip to be paid to Britain as a contribution towards the cost of Imperial services, and Britain is to present Ireland with three millions from Hand annuities as a free gift for development, and a million is to be given to each Parliament for initial expenditure. The immediate problem, however, is not whether these powers are sufficient, but whether Ireland outside Ulster will have anything to do with the machine offered it. If .Sj nn Fein is as strong now r as it was at the elections of 1918 it can carry a majority of the seats in the Southern Parliament, and wreck it. This development has been foreseen, for it is provided in the Act that if the number of members returned to either Parliament, or the number taking the oath of allegiance is less than half the total named, Crown colony government may be established in the area concerned. There is, as a northern contemporary points out, really no guarantee that conditions in South Ireland will be any better under the Act than they have been for months past. Yet, there is surely hope for Ireland and England in' this longoverdue act of justice, or to put it more accurately, instalment of that act. The supreme tragedy is that Home Rule was not granted years ago, and the consequences of that and other blunders and crimes are incalculable. Ijt is the story of the Bibyline books over again, on a great scale. But the past cannot be undone, and the present offers a way out of the rvelter of stupidity, bloodshed aifd hate in which Irish affairs have become involved. It gives the Irish people power to work out their own destiny. It opens a road to unioit between north and south; to a contented, prosperous, united Ireland within the Empire,