used which implies that to ask for Grattan's
Parliament is equivalent to asking for Colonial self-government as in
Victoria. No two things are in reality more different. It is no
exaggeration to say that the Constitution of 1782 presented in its
principles the exact antithesis to the modern Constitution of Victoria.
Grattan's Constitution rested on the absolute denial of British
Parliamentary sovereignty. The keynote of his policy was the
Parliamentary independence of Ireland; its aim was to make Ireland an
independent nation connected with England only by goodwill, by common
interest, and by what has been called the "golden link" of the Crown.
The statement indeed that between the date of Irish Parliamentary
independence and the date of the Union England and Ireland were governed
under two crowns, is not much better than a piece of rhetorical
antiquarianism.[52] It is, however, undoubtedly true that from 1782 to
1800 the British Parliament had no more right to legislate for Ireland
than at the present day it has to legislate for New York, and no appeal
lay from any Irish Court to any English tribunal. But if under the
Constitution of 1782 Ireland was in one sense an independent nation, she
could not under that Constitution be called a self-governed country. The
Irish Executive was controlled by George the Third and his English
Ministers, and the passing of the Act of Union was proof, if evidence
were needed, that England possessed potent though unavowed means for
controlling the decision of the Irish Legislature. The Constitution, it
may be added, bore exactly the fruit to be expected from its anomalous
character. It stimulated national feeling; this was its saving merit. It
did not secure supremacy to the will of the Irish nation; this, as
appeared in 1800, was its fatal flaw. Compare with this the
Constitution of Victoria. The Victorian Constitution is based on
complete acknowledgment of English Parliamentary sovereignty. But the
amplest recognition of British authority is balanced by the unrestricted
enjoyment of local self-government. Hence Victoria manages her own
affairs, but Victorians are not inspired with the sense of constituting
a nation.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Gladstonian Constitution--its character.]

IV. _Home Rule under the Gladstonian Constitution_[53]--No legislative
proposal submitted to Parliament has ever received harder measure than
the Government of Ireland Bill.