hold a joint sitting, in which the
majority will prevail. As long as that provision holds, it matters very
little whether the Upper Chamber is nominated or is elected, as some
propose, by proportional representation. In either case, the Irish
House of Commons will be the real governing body, as indeed it must be
if the Irish Executive is to be properly responsible, and the new Irish
Constitution to work smoothly.

So much for the general provisions of the present Bill. The details as
to safe-guards and exclusions will be found in the full text of the
Bill contained in Appendix A, and I shall leave the question of finance
to the chapter specifically devoted to that subject.

Let us turn now to the chief arguments against the measure as set forth
in the recent debate, and as expressed with ability and power in a
pamphlet entitled "Against Home Rule," to which practically all the
chief leaders of the Unionist cause contribute articles[41]. Apart from
the Ulster case, dealt with in a previous chapter, the main argument
seems to be that the English people have not been sufficiently
consulted. "It is all so sudden," said the elderly lady when she
received a proposal from an elderly suitor who had been delaying his
passion for a score or so of years. The same painful outcry comes from
the Unionist Party twenty-seven years after the first beginning of the
discussions of Home Rule in this country.

One can imagine, indeed, that a foreign visitor, coming to this land in
ignorance of the past of English politics, would suppose that the Home
Rule controversy had now arisen for the first time. Attending Unionist
meetings, he would hear an immense amount of eloquence devoted to the
wrongs of the English people in being rushed into a premature decision,
and being asked to give judgment without proper trial. The Home Rulers
would be represented to him as men of rash and precipitate temper, who
wanted to bring about in a few months a change which would affect the
United Kingdom for centuries. And finally he would hear men thanking
God that there existed a House of Lords which, in spite of the
machinations of the Home Rulers, could still give the British public
two more years to ruminate over the question of Home Rule.

He would naturally gather from this that the proposal of Home Rule for
Ireland had come upon this country with entire freshness, and had never
before been discussed among rational men. Filled with this impression
he