Whenever a point of any novelty is made, the Chief Secretary’s secretary slips over to one of the Irish Officials who on these occasions lie ambushed at the back of the Speaker’s chair, and returns with all the elation of a honey-laden bee.  His little burden of wisdom is gratefully noted on the margin of the typewritten brief which has been already prepared in Dublin by the Board under discussion, and, entrenched behind this, the Right Honourable gentleman winds up the debate.  Sometimes his solemnity wrings laughter from men, sometimes his flippancy wrings tears from the gods, but it does not in the least matter what he says.  The division bells ring; the absentees come trooping in, learn at the door of the lobby, each from his respective Whip, whether his spontaneous, independent judgment has made him a Yes! or a No! and vote accordingly in the light of an unsullied conscience.  The Irish officials, with a sigh of relief or a shrug of contempt, collect their hats and umbrellas, and retire to their hotels to erase from their minds by slumber the babblings of a mis-spent evening.  And the course of administration in Ireland is as much affected by the whole proceedings as the course of an 80 h.p.  Mercedes is affected by a cabman’s oath.

So much for exclusively Irish affairs.  When Ireland comes into some “general” scheme of legislation the parody of government becomes if possible more fantastic in character.  Let me take just three instances—­Old Age Pensions, Insurance, and the Budget.  In regard to the first it was perhaps a matter of course that no attempt should be made to allow for the difference in economic levels between Great Britain and Ireland.  This is the very principle of Unionism:  to apply like methods to things which are unlike.  But in the calculation of details an ignorance was exhibited which passed the bounds of decency.  Mistakes of five or six per cent are, in these complex affairs, not only to be expected but almost to be desired; they help to depress ministerial cocksureness.  But in this case there was an error of 200 per cent, a circumstance which incidentally established in the English mind a pleasing legend of Irish dishonesty.  The Insurance Bill was ushered in with greater prudence.  The “government,” recognising its own inability to lead opinion, had the grace to refrain from misleading it.  No special Irish memorandum was issued, and no attempt was made to adjust the scheme to Irish social and economic conditions.  But Budgets afford on the whole the capital instance of what we may call legislation by accident.  The Act of Union solemnly prescribes the principles on which these measures are to be framed, and points to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the trustee of Irish interests.  But nobody of this generation ever knew a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had even read the Act of Union; Mr Lloyd George, on his own admission, had certainly not read it in 1909.  What has happened is very simple.  The