the critic’s own mind the assumption that some mechanism could be invented which might carry out the principle of creating an Irish Parliament without violating the conditions on which alone the idea of any such measure could be entertained by any English statesman.  Opponents, in short, of the Government of Ireland Bill attacked its details out of hostility to its principle; its defenders tried to win approval for its principle by conceding or insisting upon the defects of its details.[54] The result was unfortunate.  The Bill was never either by its opponents or its friends regarded in the light in which it ought to be viewed by a constitutional lawyer.  It was never criticised as a whole; it never therefore received full justice.  Whoever examines the now celebrated Bill in the spirit of a jurist will see that it constitutes, in spite of many obvious blots both in its special provisions and in its language, a most ingenious attempt to solve the problem of giving to Ireland a legislature which shall be at once practically independent, and theoretically dependent, upon the Parliament of Great Britain; which shall have full power to make laws and appoint an executive for Ireland, and yet shall not use that power in a way opposed to English interests or sense of justice.  The problem (it may be said) admits of no solution.  This may be so, and is indeed my own conviction.  But this conviction ought not to prevent the acknowledgment that the Bill is the rough outline of an ingeniously attempted solution.  If the Bill fails in achieving its object, the failure arises not from mistakes of detail, but from the unsoundness of the principle on which the Bill rests, and shows that the conditions on which Englishmen can wisely give Home Rule to Ireland are conditions which no scheme of Home Rule can satisfy.  The idea which lies at the basis of the plan sketched out in the Government of Ireland Bill is the combination of the Federal system and the Colonial system of Home Rule.  The right mode of criticising this combination is first to trace in the barest outline the leading features of the Bill, treating it much as if it had become an Act, and had given to Ireland an actual Constitution; and next to examine how far this Constitution, which may with no unfairness be called the “Gladstonian Constitution,” satisfies the conditions which a scheme of Home Rule is bound to fulfil.

The Gladstonian Constitution establishes a new form of government in Ireland; it also modifies, or, to use plain and accurate language, repeals the main provisions of the Act of Union, and thus introduces a fundamental change into the existing Constitution of England.[55]

The following are for our present purpose its principal features.

[Sidenote:  Its features as regards government of Ireland.]

As regards the government of Ireland—­