ker whom France has produced since the days
of Montesquieu. 'Trust in the people' did not appear the last word of
political wisdom to Alexis de Tocqueville.[133]

The Gladstonian pleas to which answer has been made are, it will be
said, arguments not in favour of our new constitution, but in support of
Home Rule. The remark is just; it points to a curious weakness in the
reasoning of Gladstonians. They adduce many reasons of more or less
weight for conceding some kind of Home Rule to Ireland. But few indeed
are the reasons put forward, either in the House of Commons or
elsewhere, in favour of the actual Home Rule Bill of 1893. As to the
merits of this definite measure Ministerialists show a singular
reticence. It may be that they wish to save time and hold that the
measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own
inherent merits. But to a critic of the new constitution another
explanation suggests itself. Can it be possible that Ministerialists
themselves are not certain what are the fixed principles of the new
policy? Everything about it is indefinite, vague, uncertain. Who can say
with assurance what Gladstonians understand by Imperial supremacy? Is
there or is there not any idea of excluding Ulster from the operation of
the Bill? Is it or is it not a principle that members from Ireland shall
be summoned to Westminster? Are the Irish members, if summoned, to vote
on all matters, or on some only? To each of these questions the only
answer that can be given is--nobody knows. But in this state of
ignorance it is natural and excusable that apologists should confine
themselves to general lines of defence. No politician who respects
himself would willingly risk a vigorous apology for the special
provisions of a particular measure, when, for aught he knows, the
provision which he thinks essential turns out to be an unimportant
detail, and is liable to sudden variation.

FOOTNOTES:

[108] 'I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not
likely to alter yours.... But hereafter they may be of some use to you,
in some future form which your commonwealth may take. In the present it
can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to
pass, as one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried
being," and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and
blood.'--_Burke's Works_, ii. (ed. 1872), p. 517, 'Reflections on the
Revolution in France.'

[109] As to th