to a division with a full sense of the responsibility attaching to their action.  A further safeguard is provided against a final conflict between the first and second orders.  If the first order negative a proposition, that negative is in force only for a period of three years, unless a dissolution takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at once; the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the whole House, and if decided in the affirmative, and assented to by the Queen, becomes law.  The first order of the Irish legislative body comprises 103 members.  It is intended to consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for the next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the Irish representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved.  The plan is this:  of the 103 members composing the first order, seventy-five are elective, and twenty-eight peerage members.  The qualification of the elective members is an annual income of L200, or the possession of a capital sum of L4000 free from all charges.  The elections are to be conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule to the Bill.  The electors must possess land or tenements within the district of the annual value of L25.  The twenty-eight peerage members consist of the existing twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in their body during the next thirty years are to be filled up in the manner at present in use respecting the election of Irish representative peers.  The Irish representative peers cease to sit in the English Parliament; but a member of that body is not required to sit in the Irish Parliament without his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to sit in the Irish Parliament will be filled up as in the case of an ordinary vacancy.  The elective members of the first order sit for ten years; every five years one half their number will retire.  The members of the first order do not vacate their seats on a dissolution of the legislative body.  At the expiration of thirty years, that is to say, upon the exhaustion of all the existing Irish representative peers, the whole of the upper order will consist of elective members.  The second order consists of 204 members, that is to say, of the 103 existing Irish members (who are transferred to the Irish Parliament), and of 101 additional members to be elected by the county districts and the represented towns, in the same manner as that in which the present 101 members for counties and towns are elected—­each constituency returning two instead of one member.  If an existing member does not assent to his transfer, his seat is vacated.

A power is given to the Legislature of Ireland to enable the Royal University of Ireland to return two members.

The provisions with respect to this second order fall within the class of enactments which are alterable by the Irish Legislature.  After the first dissolution of parliament the Irish Legislature may deal with the second order in any manner they think fit, with the important restrictions:—­(1) That in the distribution of members they must have due regard to population; (2) that they must not increase or diminish the number of members.