could also repeal it, then the Judge might consider that
that body, namely the Parliament of the United Kingdom, had in effect
ceased to exist, and that the successor to its sovereign powers, if any,
was not the British Parliament, but the Imperial Parliament, the body
which, under any view, had legal authority to alter the Constitution.
No doubt there would be a great deal to be urged on the other side. The
attention of the Judge would be called to the singular and ambiguous use
throughout the Constitution of the term Imperial Parliament, which it
might be argued was meant to show that what I have called the British
Parliament was to be identified with the Parliament of the United
Kingdom. Reference would also be made to the ambiguous saving of powers
contained in the 37th section of the Irish Government Act. The high and
all-important enquiry as to the authority of the British Parliament
sitting at Westminster would come to turn upon the studied ambiguities
of one ill-drawn section of an Act of Parliament. There the legal
question of the sovereignty of the British Parliament under the
Gladstonian Constitution may well be left. It is not within the scope of
this work to deal with the draughtsmanship of the Government of Ireland
Bill. It is easy to anticipate what would be the practical result of
that Bill's ambiguities if it passed into an Act. Irish Judges would
honestly take one view, English Judges would as honestly take another.
The Courts of Ireland would maintain that the Constitution could be
altered only in the method provided by the Constitution, namely, by the
Imperial Parliament. The English Courts would maintain that the
Constitution could also be altered by the British Parliament, which was
itself the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and possessed the
sovereignty inherent in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. No Court
in either country could satisfactorily terminate the dispute. Force
would no doubt settle what law had left undecided, but to interpret a
Constitution by power of arms is in reality to substitute revolutionary
violence for constitutional discussion.[70]

Let us next consider the matter before us, not as a question of
constitutional law, but as a question of public morality.

[Sidenote: As question of public morality.]

The enquiry then is whether under the Gladstonian Constitution the
legislative supremacy of the British Parliament is or is not morally and
in fact impaired? It is extre