but important details of local administration; men who might be corrupted themselves, must desire to place power in the hands of leaders who are as a class incorruptible.  High public spirit, a detestation of jobbery, trust and 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 a 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, the decision how these wants are to be met must be given by the whole State, that is (in the particular instance) by the majority of the electors of Great Britain and Ireland.  From this principle it does not follow either that every part of the kingdom should have those institutions which that part prefers, (though in so far as this end can be attained its attainment is desirable,) or, still less, that every part of the kingdom should have the same institutions as every other part.  That this is so everybody in a general way admits.  No one supposes that because the people of Leicester abominate vaccination the Vaccination Acts are not to be extended to that borough, or that the wish of the people of Birmingham in favour of free schools is decisive in favour of making education in Birmingham