has come to pass that one or two Irish cities possess for municipal purposes a household suffrage, some a 4l. rating franchise, some an 81. franchise, and for some women suffrage has been established. It is truly ridiculous that there should be this variety of franchises within comparatively so small an area; and it would be perfectly intolerable if it continued to exist in the urban districts of Ireland while household suffrage existed in the rural. It may be objected that the question of the franchise in towns and the organisation of a local government for the counties cannot be dealt with in the same bill. But the answer is that the title and preamble of the bill can be so framed as to include both subjects within its scope. To return, however, to the point which I specially desired to emphasise in connection with the electorate for the new local authorities. It is essential that it should be at least as wide as it has been made in England and Scotland by the recent English and Scotch Local Government Acts, and it is also essential that three should be no step backward in the direction of disfranchisement.

The fear has been expressed that the Anti-Home Rule minority would not obtain, under a household or manhood suffrage, a representation on the new local bodies adequate to the material interests which that minority represents. Personally, I should regard it as a calamity if such a result should flow from the new state of things; and I do not believe that it would occur. It would, in my opinion, be most desirable that what are called 'the propertied classes' should be represented upon the new bodies even more fully than their number on the electoral roll would warrant; and I am persuaded that the same view will commend itself to many local leaders on the popular side when the time for expressing it with some hope of practical effect arises-that is to say, when the first set of elections takes place.

Another point on which almost equal stress is to be laid is that the reform now to be attempted of the system of local government in Ireland should be accomplished by one measure. If the same plan is pursued in this case as was pursued in that of England and Scotland -the plan, namely, of establishing by one measure county councils, and by another parish councils-I personally have the greatest distrust of the scheme being ever completed. Twelve years ago, Lord Randolph Churchill, speaking on behalf of the Unionist Government of the day, promised not only similarity with England in the treatment of this question, but simultaneity. England, however, obtained its county councils in 1888 and its parish councils in 1894, while Ireland is still denied both the one and the other. The Irish people have been obliged to wait so long for even an instalment of the debt admitted to be due to them, England itself was obliged to wait so long for the crowning of the edifice of local self-government by the establishment of parish councils, that it is more than probable that,

if only a commencement is made now with the work of reconstruction in Ireland, the present generation will pass away without seeing its completion. Nor are two bills at all necessary. Complex though the existing system of Irish local government may be, it is not at all so complex as was that of England which was put an end to by the Acts of 1888 and 1894. There are not so many existing bodies to deal with; if the poor-law unions are to be rearranged with a view to amalgamation, it may not be necessary to create so many new bodies. The mention of the amalgamation of poor-law unions reminds me that it would be highly advisable to include in the forthcoming bill still another set of provisions-I mean such of the provisions as it would be desirable to retain of the measure introduced into the House of Commons last year by the Chief Secretary for the reform of workhouse management. Nothing, not even the grand jury system itself, calls out more loudly for reform in Ireland than the system of workhouse management. It is needlessly extravagant; the treatment accorded under it to the poor is demoralising on the one hand, and to some extent inhuman on the other; nearly every one is of the same opinion as to what ought to be done to remedy those evils; why should not the present occasion be availed of to give effect to the general view? The occasion is strictly appropriate, and I repeat that for my part I greatly fear that, if those minor but germane reforms are not carried out now in connection with the reconstruction of the system of local government in Ireland, many a long day will elapse before they become realities.

One word in conclusion. It will be observed that I have not dealt at all with the question of the reform of the various Government departments in Dublin which have so much to do in the way of supervision with the management of Irish local affairs, and which, it will be remembered, were the chief objects of Mr. Chamberlain's denunciations in 1885. I have left them alone for an obvious reason-namely, that the reform of the 'Castle' (as those departments are comprehensively called) would touch the question of national rather than local self-government. They are open to objection from many points of view and on many grounds, especially on the ground that their wholesale, perpetual, and to a great extent, unnecessary interference with the working of the existing local bodies leaves these latter scarcely any real freedom of action. But to my mind they are chiefly objectionable because they are themselves controlled and influenced by what Mr. Chamberlain would call a foreign Power and not by Irish opinion; and personally I believe that the only way to reform them at all is to establish a National Parliament to which they would be responsible. This objection to them, and the fact that this is the only effective remedy for their defects, will be more obvious than at present when the new local authorities come into existence. If thoroughly representative bodies are set up in the

place of the grand juries, the boards of guardians, the lunatic asylum boards, and the rest, and if the new creations are endowed with extended powers, as Mr. Chamberlain would apparently wish, it will be more of a scandal than ever, assuredly, if they as well as their predecessors should be, as he said in his famous speech at West Islington in June 1885, 'confronted, interfered with, controlled by, an English official appointed by a foreign Government and without a shadow or shade of representative authority,' and consequently it will be more urgently necessary than ever even in the interest of the new institutions, to put the matter no higher, that such a scandal should be prevented in the only way in which it can be avoided. But all this is saying, in other words, that Home Rule or national self-government will be the necessary complement of local self-government. And that is the simple truth. All roads, it is said, lead to Rome. Whatever is done in Irish affairs, or if nothing be done and stagnation be the order of the day, the Government of Ireland by means of a National Parliament and an Executive responsible to it becomes equally the inevitable solution of the Irish question.

J. E. REDMOND.

ART AND THE DAILY PAPER

No one can fail to notice the change that has been coming over the newspaper-a change that has culminated with the Jubilee. I do not mean to call attention to the fact that the editorial 'we' no longer leads a gullible public; the veil that hid an unimportant personality has been torn away, and even the man in the street now knows that the editorial 'we' is frequently not of as much value as his 'I say so.' Nor yet would I refer to the disappearance of the descriptive reporter, who never could describe anything but his own sensations, which were always the same on all occasions and never worth recording; or of the war correspondent, who would inform you of the most secret thought and complex plan of his Commanderin-Chief when he barely had enough intelligence to know upon which side he was fighting; or of the critics, mainly appointed to their posts because they were friends or relations of those in authority and nothing better could be found for them to do. Interesting as it might be to point out how to-day statesmen contribute the politics, authors and artists the reviews, while scientific men are glad to describe their inventions, I am concerned rather with another phase of newspaper work, of which very little has been said or is even known outside the offices-the illustration of the daily paper. It has come about very gradually until lately. But the Jubilee seems to have completed the change, almost all the dailies at the time having published illustrations. Even the Times blossomed out in colour with a supplement-made in Germany.

The printing of drawings in newspapers is no new thing, as Mr. Mason Jackson has explained in his History of the Illustrated Press. Indeed, the daily paper would always have been illustrated had this been possible. It is only within the last twenty-five years, however, that some of the difficulties in the way have been practically surmounted. The first illustrated daily which lived for any length of time was, as far as I know, the Daily Graphic of New York, and it was illustrated chiefly by photo- or some other sort of lithography. The second was the Daily Graphic of London. The first came to an end years ago; the second had, and even still has, no rivals in London in its own sphere. But being issued from the office of the

weekly Graphic, it only in the beginning roused the curiosity of the public as to the mechanical methods of its production. It is, in comparison with the other morning penny papers, small in size, and its illustrations are small too. It was not, therefore, until a little over two years ago, when the Daily Chronicle, one morning, suddenly appeared containing effective drawings of the size of those published in the weekly illustrated papers, that editors generally gave any thought at all to the subject; that is, to the present method of reproducing and printing drawings. Sixty years ago, and more, large woodengravings of important events were issued with the dailies, but either not printed in them or else not by the methods now employed. In America also illustration has been used for years, and it has been customary to refer with pride to the Sunday paper as the greatest and most glorious outcome of that greatest and most glorious country. However, like many another of my country's productions, it is a tour de force-a folio magazine. It is not printed, as a rule, on the same press as the daily newspaper; but when it is, one must remember that the American Sunday journal usually sells for 24d., and not for a penny. Much, therefore, can be accomplished that is impossible here. The Pall Mall Gazette also, I believe, claims to be the pioneer of English daily illustrated journalism. But the claim cannot be

maintained.

As I had the good fortune to see the greater part of the experiments that were made, it may be interesting if I describe the new movement from the start. It originated in the following fashion. I was asked to prepare for the Chronicle a series of drawings to illustrate the work of the County Council; a series of pictures of the parks, the gardens, the polytechnics, the fire and other departments which the Council had opened, built, or taken over. Though flattered by this offer, I felt at once that to accept it unreservedly was far beyond my powers; many of the subjects I should not have cared to draw, and at that time I had still everything to learn of the methods to be used for reproducing and printing the drawings. For I then knew nothing of the methods of producing the daily illustrated paper, save in theory. As the editor wished to keep his scheme to himself, it was not possible to consult the publishers of the Graphic, who, I have no doubt, would, from their vast practical experience, have furnished me much information, of which many people will say I am still in need. All these things considered, I realised that the selection of the illustrations, and the care of their mechanical reproduction, were almost as much as I could reasonably venture to undertake. The task was the easier for me, as I found in the proprietors, and all connected with the paper, the most valuable collaborators and the most enthusiastic experimenters.

Now, experimenting in newspaper printing is enormously expensive, very difficult, and extremely dangerous. A monthly magazine like