nstitutional lawyer. It was never criticised as a whole; it never
therefore received full justice. Whoever examines the now celebrated
Bill in the spirit of a jurist will see that it constitutes, in spite of
many obvious blots both in its special provisions and in its language, a
most ingenious attempt to solve the problem of giving to Ireland a
legislature which shall be at once practically independent, and
theoretically dependent, upon the Parliament of Great Britain; which
shall have full power to make laws and appoint an executive for Ireland,
and yet shall not use that power in a way opposed to English interests
or sense of justice. The problem (it may be said) admits of no solution.
This may be so, and is indeed my own conviction. But this conviction
ought not to prevent the acknowledgment that the Bill is the rough
outline of an ingeniously attempted solution. If the Bill fails in
achieving its object, the failure arises not from mistakes of detail,
but from the unsoundness of the principle on which the Bill rests, and
shows that the conditions on which Englishmen can wisely give Home Rule
to Ireland are conditions which no scheme of Home Rule can satisfy. The
idea which lies at the basis of the plan sketched out in the Government
of Ireland Bill is the combination of the Federal system and the
Colonial system of Home Rule. The right mode of criticising this
combination is first to trace in the barest outline the leading features
of the Bill, treating it much as if it had become an Act, and had given
to Ireland an actual Constitution; and next to examine how far this
Constitution, which may with no unfairness be called the "Gladstonian
Constitution," satisfies the conditions which a scheme of Home Rule is
bound to fulfil.

The Gladstonian Constitution establishes a new form of government in
Ireland; it also modifies, or, to use plain and accurate language,
repeals the main provisions of the Act of Union, and thus introduces a
fundamental change into the existing Constitution of England.[55]

The following are for our present purpose its principal features.

[Sidenote: Its features as regards government of Ireland.]

As regards the government of Ireland--

The Executive Government of Ireland is vested in the Queen, but is
carried on by the Lord-Lieutenant and a Council.[56] Though the
formation and powers of the Executive are under the Constitution left
very much at large, we may fairly assume that the authors