every cobbler in the land into a
peer," and could thus put an end, as the Duke of Wellington declared, to
"the Constitution of this country."[21] "The Crown is not bound by Act
of Parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."[22]
The Crown can make peace or war without consulting Parliament, can by
secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and
give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on Statute. The
prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric Sovereign, aided by
an obsequious Minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted
criminals in the land loose upon society.[22] But criticism which proves
too much in effect proves nothing.

In short, every stage in the progress of constitutional reform has, in
matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results,
and the prophets who condemn Home Rule have no better credentials;
indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things
as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied
with things as they were.[23]

It is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of Home Rule to
tell us plainly where they stand. They claim a mandate from the country
for their policy. They neither asked nor received a mandate to support
the system of Government which prevailed in Ireland at the last
election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have
substituted for that system. Do they mean to go back or forward? They
cannot stand still. They have already discovered that one act of
repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have
no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary
Government in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with which
eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament. They forget
that the Irish people are behind the Irish members. How is Ireland to be
governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives
is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? Could even Yorkshire or
Lancashire be governed permanently in that way? Let it be observed that
we have now reached this pass, namely, that the opponents of Home Rule
are opposed to the Irish members, not on any particular form of
self-government for Ireland, but on any form; in other words, they
resist the all but unanimous demand of Ireland for what "Unionists" of
all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonabl