of the National Assembly knew precisely what
they were doing. They meant to alter the fundamental institutions of
France. A change moreover in the whole scheme of French government was
an admitted necessity. France might be uncertain as to the working of
the new constitution, but France was absolutely certain that the _ancien
regime_ was detestable. Individuals or nations may wisely risk much when
they are escaping from a social condition which they detest, they may
know that an innovation is in itself of doubtful expediency, yet may
consider any alleged reform worth a trial when no change can be a change
for the worse. In the France of 1791 confidence in the future meant
abhorrence of the past.

The authors of our new constitution can hardly be called the designers
of their own handiwork; they have been the sport of accident. Their
intention, or rather the intention of their leader, was in 1886 merely
to grant some sort of Parliamentary independence to Ireland. The
resolution to concede Home Rule was sudden; it may have been taken up
without due weighing of its consequences. It has assuredly led to
unexpected results. The statesmen who meant merely to give Home Rule to
Ireland have stumbled into the making of a new constitution for the
United Kingdom. What wonder that their workmanship betrays its
accidental origin. It has no coherence, no consistency; nothing is
called by its right name, and words are throughout substituted for
facts; the new Parliament of Ireland is denied its proper title; the
supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is nominally saved, and is really
destroyed; and the very statesmen who proclaim the supremacy of the
Imperial Parliament refuse to assert the subordination of the Irish
Parliament. The authors of the constitution are at sea as to its
leading principles, and its most essential provision they deem an
organic detail, which may at any moment be modified or removed. The
whole thing is an incongruous patchwork affair, made up of shreds and
tatters torn from the institutions of other lands. It is as inconsistent
with the proposed and rejected Constitution of 1886 as with the existing
Constitution of England. While however our constitution-makers tender
for the acceptance of the nation a scheme of fundamental change, whereof
the effect is uncertain, conjectural, and perilous, and the permanence
is not guaranteed by its authors, Englishmen are well satisfied with
their old constitution; they may d