of the kind in the Australian Commonwealth Act of 1900.  Australia, no doubt, correctly represents the tendency of modern thought on this matter.  Some of the American safeguards have produced great inconvenience.  Nor can it be denied that the most elaborately contrived legal safeguards are of less value than the moral safeguard afforded by the sense of honour, justice, and prudence in the community.  The existence of these qualities in Ireland, as in other white countries, is the true foundation of Home Rule.  Some day Irishmen will ask, as a united country, for the repeal of these statutory safeguards.

That brings me to the penultimate point of importance, which may be held to affect the inclusion or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster—­I mean the question of future constitutional amendment.  Here the colonial analogies are a little complicated.  Since the Australian Colonies Act of 1850, in the new grant of a Constitution to a self-governing Colony, power has invariably been given to amend its own Constitution, without, of course, detracting from any powers specified in it for preserving the sovereignty of the Mother Country.  Canada, when federating in 1867, took the somewhat singular course of making no provision in her Federal Constitution for its subsequent amendment, though, by Section 92 of the British North America Act, she gave her Provinces the exclusive right to amend their own Constitutions, a right which three of them have used to abolish their Upper Chambers.  The Dominion Constitution, then, cannot be amended otherwise than by an Imperial Act.  Such amending Acts are promoted by the Dominion Government without any specially devised machinery for ascertaining the public opinion of Canadians.  Australia, on the other hand, when federating in 1900, made elaborate arrangements, which have been put several times into operation, for the amendment of the Federal Constitution by the Australian people itself, without an Imperial Act.  Now, it will follow as a matter of course that Ireland will be given powers, as in both the previous Bills,[93] to amend her own Constitution within certain defined limits, after a certain lapse of time, and without encroaching upon Imperial authority.  For my part I would strongly urge that the powers now to be conferred should be much wider; for I believe that Ireland alone can make a really perfect Constitution for herself.  But, that point apart, the question arises of the further amendment, outside such permissive powers, of the Home Rule Act itself, which will, of course, contain within its four corners the whole of the Irish Constitution, so far as it can be written down.  No special arrangements were made for such a contingency in the Bill of 1893, presumably because Ireland was to be represented at Westminster and would have a share in the making of any amending act.  In the Bill of 1886, which excluded the Irish Members, Mr. Gladstone proposed (in Clause 39) that no alteration of the Act should be made (apart, of course, from points left for Irish alteration) except (1) by an Imperial Act formally assented to by the Irish Legislature, or (2) by an Imperial Act for the passing of which a stated number of Members of both branches of the Irish Legislature should be summoned to sit at Westminster.