I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot be mitigated.  Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment.  Let me remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish representation at Westminster.  Obviously it is the most fundamental question of all in the matter of Home Rule.  The whole structure of the Bill hangs on it.  It affects every provision, and particularly the financial provisions.  Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it an “organic detail,” and in popular controversy it is still generally regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light.  As a matter of history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding the fate of the Home Rule Bills.  In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental opposition.  In 1893, in proposing to retain them—­first with limited functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British Members—­he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical.  On both occasions Mr. Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition:  in 1886 because he was then a Federalist, advocating “Quebec” Home Rule for Ireland, and regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two.

These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with what they call “Federal” Home Rule.  It was through a desperate desire to conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and produced a scheme which he himself could not defend.  And it was one of the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate—­a statesman, moreover, possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time—­who snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893.  We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events.  We want Home Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own devising.

Now to details.  There are five ways of dealing with the question, and of these I will take first the four different ways of including Irish Members in the House of Commons, leaving their total exclusion to the last.

1.  Inclusion of Irish Members in their full numbers for all purposes—­that is, with a right to vote upon all questions—­British, Irish, and Imperial. [By “full numbers” I mean, not the existing figure of 103, but numbers fully, and no more than fully, warrantable according to the latest figures of population—­say 70.]