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ber, 1873, the restoration of an Irish Parliament 
became for the first time a question of practical 
politics. 
At a meeting of the Dublin Corporation in 1843, 
Isaac Butt, then a brilliant young barrister, was the 
spokesman of the Unionist minority opposed to 
Alderman Danijel O’Connell’s motion in favour of 
Repeal. It was said that O'Connell, at the con- 
clusion of the debate, prophesied that. Butt would 
yet be the leader of the National Party in Ireland. 
However that may be, a careful perusal of Butt’s 
long and elaborate speech against Repeal reveals no 
single argument against the alternative policy of 
Home Rule. 
He objected, as Macaulay had objected, to 
O'Connell shirking the details of his policy of 
Repeal. He pointed out that there never was a 
constitution in Ireland which gave to an English 
king responsible Irish advisers, and he significantly 
concluded :—¢ If Alderman O'Connell calied for an 
Irish Cabinet as well as an Irish Parliament, it would 
be a very different question.” 
O’Connell himself, a little later, seems to have 
arrived at the same conclusion. When Sturge Brown, 
a well-known English politician, suggested a Federal 
solution of the Irish difficulty, the suggestion was 
favourably received by O'Connell. “The Irish,” he 
wrote, ‘“ desire a Parliament to regulate all the local 
affairs of Ireland; in matters wholly relating to 
England they do not desire to interfere.” Again, 
in December, 1844, he wrote :—“I will own that 
since I have come to contemplate the specific 
differences, such as they are, between simple Repeal 
and Federalism, I do at present feel a preference for 
Federalism, as tending more to the utility of Ireland 
and the maintenance of her connection, than Repeal.” 
The great Home Rule Conference in the Rotunda 
in 1873, under the presidency of Isaac Butt, followed