which under clause 9 of the Home Rule Bill,
1893, in its earliest form, were intended to restrain Irish Peers, or
members representing Irish constituencies, from deliberating or voting
on any Bill or motion the operation of which should be confined to Great
Britain, were swept away by the Gladstonian majority before the Home
Rule Bill was sent up to the House of Lords. The unfairness of giving to
Ireland a Parliament intended to legislate on all, or nearly all, Irish
affairs, and at the same time retaining eighty Irish members at
Westminster with full power to legislate on all English and Scottish
affairs, secured in 1895 the enthusiastic approval by the British
electorate of the rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1893 by the House
of Lords.

[21] See Bill, clause 5 (1).

[22] Bill, clauses 22, 23.

[23] 'The Imperial Parliament was supreme, but he held the passing of
the Home Rule Bill, reserving certain subjects to the Imperial
Parliament and committing others to the Parliament of Ireland, as
amounting to a compact which would be observed by men of common sense
that there would be no capricious or vexatious interference by this
Parliament with an action within the appointed sphere of the Parliament
of Ireland. If such interference were attempted, the presence in this
Parliament of eighty Irish members--a number which had been found to be
sufficient to initiate an Irish constitution--would be found sufficient
to protect an Irish constitution when it was given.'--Mr. Sexton, Feb.
13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates,_ p. 318.

[24] For evidence that the power of the Imperial Parliament is intended
under the new constitution to be subjected to at any rate a moral limit,
the reader should note particularly the terms of the Home Rule Bill,
clause 12, sub-clause (3).

CHAPTER II

THE NEW CONSTITUTION

A critic of the new constitution, intent on ascertaining how it affects
the relation of Great Britain and Ireland, will do well to divert his
attention from the numerous details of the Home Rule Bill, important as
many of them are,[25] and fix his mind almost exclusively upon the four
leading features of the measure.

These are:--

_First_. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.

_Secondly_. The retention of the Irish members in the Parliament
at Westminster.

_Thirdly_. The powers of the Irish Government, in which term is
here included both the Irish Executive and the Irish