very men who support the National League, would assuredly pass laws
which every man in England, and many men throughout Ireland, would hold
to be unjust, and which, whether in themselves unjust or not, would
certainly set aside Imperial legislation, which England is bound by
every consideration of honour and justice to uphold. There is no need to
demonstrate here what has been demonstrated by one writer after another,
and, indeed, hardly needs proof, that at the present day an Irish
Parliament would certainly deprive Irish landlords, and possibly deprive
Irish Protestants, of rights which the Imperial Parliament would never
take away, and which the Imperial Government is absolutely bound to
protect.[47] If the English Government were to be base enough to
acquiesce in legislation which the Imperial Parliament would never
itself have countenanced, then England would be dishonoured; if Bill
after Bill passed by the Irish Legislature were prevented from becoming
law by veto after veto, then English honour might be saved, but the
self-government of Ireland would be at an end, nor would England gain
much in credit. The English Ministry can, as long as the connection with
a colony endures, arrest Colonial legislation. But the Home Government
cannot for any effective purpose interfere with the administrative
action of a Colonial Executive. Given courts, an army, and a police
controlled by the leaders of the Land League, and it is easy to see how
rents might be abolished and landlords driven into exile without the
passing by the Irish Parliament of a single Act which a Colonial
Secretary could reasonably veto, or which even an English court could
hold void under the provisions of the Colonial Laws Act. It is indeed
probable that wild legislation at Dublin might provoke armed resistance
in Ulster. But a movement which, were Ireland an independent nation,
might ensure just government for all classes of Irishmen would, if
Ireland were a colony, only add a new element of confusion to an already
intolerable state of affairs. Imagine for a moment what would have been
the position of England if Englishmen had been convinced that Riel,
though technically a rebel, was in reality a patriot, resisting the
intolerable oppression of the Dominion Parliament, and you may form some
slight idea of the feeling of shame and disgrace with which Englishmen
would see British soldiers employed to suppress the revolt of Ulster
against a Government which,