What then is the harm which a body of eighty or ninety Irish members can work in Parliament?  This is the answer.  They may (it is said) in the first place delay, obstruct, and render impossible the carrying through of important measures; London may go without a municipality; widowers may wait for years without being able to marry their deceased wives’ sisters; we may not during this generation get the blessing of a good criminal code, if Mr. Parnell and his followers sit in Parliament prepared to practice all the arts of obstruction.  The Irish members, in the second place, perturb and falsify the whole system of party government.  The majority of Great Britain wish to be ruled say by Lord Salisbury; the Parnellites do not care whether Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone is Premier, but they do care for making the English executive feeble, and ridiculous.  They can, therefore, by the practice of a very little art, seize some opportunity of putting Lord Salisbury in a minority, and turning him out of office.  Mr. Gladstone comes back into what is ironically called power.  The same game begins again.  The Parnellites coalesce with the Tories, we have a change of Cabinet, and possibly a dissolution.  Nor are changes of Ministry the whole of the evil.  The high tone of party politics is degraded.  English or Scottish members of Parliament are but men; they are liable to be tempted; the Parnellites have the means of offering temptation; and temptation, members of Parliament intimate to us, will in the long run be too great for their virtue.  The presence, in short, at Westminster of eighty-six gentlemen who do not respect the dignity or care for the efficiency of Parliament is absolutely fatal to the success of Parliamentary government, and to the character of Parliamentary statesmanship.  We must, it is inferred, let the Parnellites have a Parliament of their own in Ireland, or else we shall soon cease to have any Parliament worth keeping in England.

[Sidenote:  Criticism.]

The force of this line of argument, as far as it goes, cannot be denied.  The presence in the House of Commons of politicians disloyal to Parliament causes immense inconvenience; but to anyone not a member of the House of Commons, it appears singular that men of sense should think the inconveniences of obstruction a sufficient ground for breaking up the Constitution.  The whole thing is a question of proportion.  The nation suffers a good deal from obstruction, but the suffering is not of a kind to justify revolution.  A toothache is a bad thing, but a severe toothache hardly suggests suicide; and though life might not be worth having, if toothache were to last for years, the thoughts of putting an end to one’s existence are removed by the knowledge that an aching tooth can be drawn by a dentist.  Now the more obvious evils of obstruction can clearly be removed by changes of procedure.  Members of Parliament appear to think that to alter the rules of the House of Commons;