[54] Criticism of particular provisions was made the easier by the fact that hesitations of statesmanship betrayed themselves throughout the Bill in blunders of draughtsmanship.  The very heading of the Bill is a misdescription, and involves confusion of ideas.  The expressions “status of the Crown,” “Executive Government,” “Imperial Parliament,” are from a legal point of view open to severe criticism; and the substitution of the name “Irish legislature” or “Legislature of Ireland” for the plain intelligible term Irish Parliament, involves something like political cowardice.  For errors of this kind, though in one sense errors of draughtsmanship, official draughtsmen are, it must in fairness be remembered, no more responsible than is an amanuensis for the erasures and blots which mar a letter written or re-written to suit the contradictory views of a writer who does not quite know his own meaning and is not anxious to put his meaning into plain words. (See for some excellent criticisms on the Government of Ireland Bill two letters in the St. James’s Gazette of 20th and 22nd April, 1880 signed II.)

[55] My statement that the Government of Ireland Bill repeals the main provisions of the Act of Union is made, not because I anticipate that the Bill if passed would lead to a repeal of the Union, but because it is my opinion that the Bill if passed would, as a matter of law, repeal the provisions of that Act, under which the United Kingdom is represented in one and the same Parliament to be styled the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland.  The effect of the Bill would be in very general terms that Ireland would be represented in a Parliament which contained no English or Scotch representatives, and Great Britain would be represented in a Parliament which contained no Irish representatives.  Occasionally and for one definite purpose, and no other, namely for the purpose of modifying the terms of the Gladstonian Constitution, a Parliament might be convened which contained representatives from England, Scotland, and Ireland.  By what name any one of these assemblies might be called is a matter of indifference; but that either the British Parliament which contained no Irish representatives, or the Irish Parliament which contained no English or Scotch representatives, or the exceptional and only occasionally convoked body whose one function is to modify a single Act of Parliament, could be considered by any lawyer the “one and the same Parliament” in which the United Kingdom is now represented, is in my judgment all but incredible.  If, however, the term “repeal” causes offence or misunderstanding, let us substitute the word “modify,” which, however, I believe to be less accurate.  The lay reader ought to be reminded that “Statutes may be repealed either by express words contained in later Acts of Parliament, or by implication,” and that “a repeal by implication is effected when the provisions of a later enactment are so inconsistent with, or repugnant to, the provisions of an earlier enactment that the two cannot stand together” (Wilberforce, ‘Statute Law,’ p. 310).  My contention is that the Government of Ireland Bill would on becoming law be so inconsistent with portions of 39 & 40 Geo. III. cap. 67, as to amount to a repeal thereof. (For a statement of an opposite opinion, see Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlet on the Irish Question pp. 38, 39.)