But the distribution of such time as there is, is a revel of
ineptitudes. It resembles the drawing of a schoolboy who has not yet
learned perspective. A stranger dropping into the Chamber will find it
spending two hours in helping to determine whether Russia is to have a
Czar, and the next four hours helping to determine whether Rathmines is
to have, let us say, a new sewer. The affairs of India, involving the
political welfare of three hundred millions of human beings, get one
day; Egypt, that test case in international ethics, has to be content
with a few scattered hours. And, despite all this, local questions are
not considered at sufficient length or with sufficient knowledge. The
parish pump is close enough to spoil St Stephen's as an Imperial
Council, and yet so far away as to destroy its effectiveness as an organ
of local government.
Such an assembly is clearly unfitted to function as the cerebrum of
Empire. It must be relieved of burdens which in the complexity of modern
politics it is no longer able to bear. How is this to be done? In one
way and in one way only, by leaving local business to local bodies.
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