With the important exception of taxation, with which I shall deal last, no other power which should properly be reserved to the Imperial Parliament, or delegated to the Irish Parliament, has any appreciable bearing upon the exclusion of Irish Members from the House of Commons.  Nor do any of them raise issues which are likely to be troublesome.  Common sense and mutual convenience should decide them.  The Army, Navy, and other military forces I have already dealt with.  The Crown, the Lord-Lieutenant, War and Peace, Prize and Booty of War, Foreign Relations and Treaties (with the exception of commercial Treaties), Titles, Extradition, Neutrality,[86] and Treason, are subjects upon which the Colonies have no power to legislate or act, and of which it would be needless, strictly, to make any formal statutory exception in the case of Ireland, though the exception no doubt will be made in the Bill.  Naturalization, Coinage, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, are all matters in which the Colonies have local powers, whose existence, and the limitations attaching to them, are determined either solely by constitutional custom or with the addition of an implied or express statutory authority.[87] The two former would, I should think, be wholly reserved to the Imperial Parliament.  In the case of the latter three, which were wholly reserved in the Bill of 1886 and 1893, Ireland might be placed in the position of a self-governing Colony.[88]

In Trade and Navigation it would be wise to take the same course.  The Home Rule Bill of 1886, without giving Ireland representation at Westminster, denied her all powers over Trade and Navigation.  The Bill of 1893 gave her powers over Trade within Ireland and Inland Navigation, and these powers at any rate should be given in the coming Bill, together with the larger functions also; though Ireland would naturally leave in operation the great bulk of the statutes concerned, since they intimately affect the commercial and industrial relations of the two countries.  For the rest, Ireland no more than the Colonies can be freed from a measure of Imperial control maintained by Acts like the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894.

The Postal Service in Ireland should, as in the Bill of 1886, come under Irish control.

In the Home Rule Bill of 1893 (Section 34) it was laid down that for three years the Irish Legislature should not “pass an Act respecting the relations of landlord or tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally.”  Such a provision repeated in the coming Bill would be inconsistent with the absence of Irish Members from Westminster.  But I take it for granted that there is no question of its repetition.  At first it might appear that Land Purchase should be distinguished from other branches of land legislation and reserved to the Imperial Government on the ground that it needs Imperial credit.  I shall deal with this point fully in Chapter XIV., and only need here to express the view that Land Purchase cannot be separated from other branches of land legislation, or from the Congested Districts Board, or even from the control of the police, and that we are bound to give, and shall be acting wisely in giving, all these powers to the Irish Legislature from the first.