The Irish leaders are of necessity revolutionists, and, it must be added, revolutionists of no high character.  Revolutionists on accession to power do not lay aside the revolutionary temperament, and this temperament may have every other virtue, but it knows nothing of the virtue of justice.  The Gladstonian Constitution withdraws Ireland from the control of the Government of the United Kingdom, which with all its faults must of necessity possess more impartiality than can a Ministry formed out of the leaders of any Irish faction.  The Gladstonian Constitution therefore does leave unpopular classes or individuals exposed to considerable risks of injustice at the hands of the Irish Government.

[Sidenote:  Methods for securing just government.]

Though it is from the nature of things almost impossible to take effective steps for ensuring that an Irish executive shall make a right use of its powers, it is an essential feature of the Gladstonian Constitution that the Irish Parliament shall so far at least use its authority justly as to keep within the limits placed upon its competence.  Whether these limitations have been wisely drawn, and whether they may not be in some respects too wide and in others too narrow, are inquiries which, though important in themselves, need hardly detain us.  The question in comparison with which all matters of detail sink into insignificance is not what are the limitations which the Constitution imposes on the competence of the Irish Parliament, but what is the efficacity of the means provided by the Constitution for compelling the Irish Parliament to respect these limitations?  This is the one vital inquiry, for upon the answer to it depends the reality of the constitutional provisions for the maintenance of just legislation.  These methods are, as already pointed out, twofold.

[Sidenote:  1.  Veto of Lord-Lieutenant.]

The first is the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant.  Let us assume, though the truth of the assumption is not quite clear, that this veto is combined, as in the case of the colonies, with a further power of disallowance on the part of the Crown, or in effect of the British Ministry.  The result is that the British Ministry, or, to put the thing plainly, the British House of Commons, can put a check on such Irish legislation as may be opposed to the letter or to the spirit of the Constitution.  The check is in one sense real, but it must, as in the case of the colonies, be but rarely employed.  Its constant use, or its use on occasions of great importance, would seem to Irishmen, and with good reason, to nullify the concession of Home Rule.  Suppose, for example, the Irish Ministry carry a measure for artificially stimulating Irish commerce, and the Crown disallows it on the ground that it is contrary to the provision of the Constitution forbidding the Irish Parliament to make any law relating to trade.  The Irish Cabinet thereupon resigns.  What course is the Lord-Lieutenant to take?  If he uses the veto he