or granted in the case of Ireland the fundamental probabilities of
civil society. He who looks with "indolent and kingly gaze" upon all
projects of written constitutions need not turn to the Appendix unless he
will. Two features of the plan were cardinal.

The foundation of the scheme was the establishment in Ireland of a
domestic legislature to deal with Irish as distinguished from imperial
affairs. It followed from this that if Irish members and representative
peers remained at Westminster at all, though they might claim a share in
the settlement of imperial affairs, they could not rightly control English
or Scotch affairs. This was from the first, and has ever since remained,
the Gordian knot. The cabinet on a review of all the courses open
determined to propose the plan of total exclusion, save and unless for the
purpose of revising this organic statute.

The next question was neither so hard nor so vital. Ought the powers of
the Irish legislature to be specifically enumerated? Or was it better to
enumerate the branches of legislation from which the statutory parliament
was to be shut out? Should we enact the things that they might do, or the
things that they might not do, leaving them the whole residue of
law-making power outside of these exceptions and exclusions? The latter
was the plan adopted in the bill. Disabilities were specified, and
everything not so specified was left within the scope of the Irish
authority. These disabilities comprehended all matters affecting the
crown. All questions of defence and armed force were shut out; all foreign
and colonial relations; the law of trade and navigation, of coinage and
legal tender. The new legislature could not meddle with certain charters,
nor with certain contracts, nor could it establish or endow any particular
religion.(196)

IV

Among his five spurious types of courage, Aristotle names for one the man
who seems to be brave, only because he does not see his danger. This, at
least, was not Mr. Gladstone's case. No one knew better than the leader in
the enterprise, how formidable were the difficulties that lay in his path.
The giant mass of secular English prejudice against Ireland frowned like a
mountain chain across the track. A strong and proud nation had trained
itself for long courses of time in habits of dislike for the history, the
political claims, the religion, the temperament, of a weaker nation. The
violence of the Irish members in the last p