[56] The Government of Ireland Bill, clause 7.

[57] See the Government of Ireland Bill, clauses 1, 9.

[58] See the Government of Ireland Bill, clause 7.

[59] Ibid., clause 25.

[60] Ibid., clause 7.

[61] As to the disallowance of Colonial bills, see pp. 202-5, ante.

[62] See the Government of Ireland Bill, clause 25, sub-clause (a), (b) and (c).

[63] Government of Ireland Bill, clause 24.

[64] Government of Ireland Bill, clauses 37, 39.  On the whole question as to the mode in which the Gladstonian Constitution, or in other words the Government of Ireland Bill, is intended to be altered, readers are specially referred to the terms of the Bill itself.  The whole matter is involved in so much controversy that one can hardly make any statement about it which an opponent will not question.  The parts of the Bill to be studied are clauses 37 and 39.

[65] See Government of Ireland Bill, clause 39.

[66] I am quite aware that the account I have given of the proposed Gladstonian Constitution is likely not to be accepted as correct by some of the supporters of the Government of Ireland Bill.  That measure by designating both what I have termed the British Parliament and the Imperial Parliament by the one name Imperial Parliament, conceals in my judgment the extent of the alteration which the Bill contemplates.  For the sake of clearness of thought I must request my readers to distinguish carefully four different bodies:—­

1.  The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.  This is the actually existing Parliament constituted by the Act of Union with Ireland.

2.  The British Parliament; that is, the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the Irish representatives removed from it.  This body is called under the Government of Ireland Bill the Imperial Parliament.  It is a distinctly different body from the Parliament of the United Kingdom.  Whether it does or does not inherit the legal powers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is a separate question afterwards to be considered.  All that I now insist upon is that it is a different body.

3.  The Irish Parliament, a body admittedly constituted or to be constituted under the Government of Ireland Bill, and therein called the Irish Legislature.

4.  The Imperial Parliament, a body in effect consisting of the British Parliament with the addition of the Irish representatives, or in other words of the British Parliament combined with the Irish Parliament.  This body is convoked, as I have pointed out, only for the special purpose of altering the Gladstonian Constitution.  It is termed in the Government of Ireland Bill the Imperial Parliament.

What I am most anxious my readers should note is that the bodies 2 and 4 are each termed in the Bill the Imperial Parliament, and thereby not only confused together, but as far as possible each identified with the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom, with which neither really corresponds.  The British Parliament differs from the Parliament of the United Kingdom certainly in constitution, if not also in authority.