errors of
draughtsmanship, official draughtsmen are, it must in fairness be
remembered, no more responsible than is an amanuensis for the erasures
and blots which mar a letter written or re-written to suit the
contradictory views of a writer who does not quite know his own meaning
and is not anxious to put his meaning into plain words. (See for some
excellent criticisms on the Government of Ireland Bill two letters in
the _St. James's Gazette_ of 20th and 22nd April, 1880 signed II.)

[55] My statement that the Government of Ireland Bill repeals the main
provisions of the Act of Union is made, not because I anticipate that
the Bill if passed would lead to a repeal of the Union, but because it
is my opinion that the Bill if passed would, as a matter of law, repeal
the provisions of that Act, under which the United Kingdom is
represented in one and the same Parliament to be styled the Parliament
of Great Britain and Ireland. The effect of the Bill would be in very
general terms that Ireland would be represented in a Parliament which
contained no English or Scotch representatives, and Great Britain would
be represented in a Parliament which contained no Irish representatives.
Occasionally and for one definite purpose, and no other, namely for the
purpose of modifying the terms of the Gladstonian Constitution, a
Parliament might be convened which contained representatives from
England, Scotland, and Ireland. By what name any one of these assemblies
might be called is a matter of indifference; but that either the British
Parliament which contained no Irish representatives, or the Irish
Parliament which contained no English or Scotch representatives, or the
exceptional and only occasionally convoked body whose one function is to
modify a single Act of Parliament, could be considered by any lawyer the
"one and the same Parliament" in which the United Kingdom is now
represented, is in my judgment all but incredible. If, however, the term
"repeal" causes offence or misunderstanding, let us substitute the word
"modify," which, however, I believe to be less accurate. The lay reader
ought to be reminded that "Statutes may be repealed either by express
words contained in later Acts of Parliament, or by implication," and
that "a repeal by implication is effected when the provisions of a later
enactment are so inconsistent with, or repugnant to, the provisions of
an earlier enactment that the two cannot stand together" (Wilberforce,
'