the other is that the compulsion of loyal citizens to forgo the direct protection of the government whose sovereignty they admit, and to accept the rule of a government whose moral claim to their allegiance they deny, is a proceeding of the grossest injustice.  Let the people of England also be solemnly warned that the Gladstonian policy of 1893 repeats the essential error of the condemned policy of Protestant ascendency.  Gladstonians hold that the democracy of England may ally itself with the democracy of Ireland, and may treat lightly the rights and the wishes of a Protestant and Conservative minority.  In bygone times the aristocratic and Protestant government of England allied itself with the Protestant and aristocratic government of Ireland, and held light the rights and the wishes of the Catholic majority.  Each policy labours under the same defect.  The enforced supremacy of a class, be it a minority or a majority, is opposed to the equitable principle of the supremacy of the whole nation.  There is no reason to suppose that Catholic ascendency will be found more tolerable than was Protestant ascendency.

The policy of Unionism should be marked by simplicity.

The Unionist leaders have a clear though a difficult duty to perform.  Their one immediate function is resistance to a dangerous revolution.  Logically and politically, there was a good deal to be said for the deliberate refusal to discuss, or to vote upon, any of the details of the Home Rule Bill.  There is always a danger lest the attempt to amend a radically and essentially vicious measure should promote the delusion that it is amendable.  And any success in debate would be dearly purchased if it led the electors to suppose that the Government of Ireland Bill, which in fact embodies a policy, so fundamentally perverse that no alteration of details can render it tolerable, is a measure which, though faulty in its execution, is sound in principle.  The Unionists leaders, however, whom we can absolutely trust, have decided that abstention from debate would be an error.  As far as the matter is to be looked at from a parliamentary point of view their judgment is decisive, and since the policy of combating the Bill point by point has been adopted it should be carried out, as it is being carried out, with the utmost stringency.  Minute discussion of the clauses of the Bill is elaborate instruction for the mass of the nation.

To the cry of obstruction no heed whatever need be paid.  As long as there is real discussion obstruction becomes, when the matter in debate is the formation of a new constitution for the United Kingdom, an impossibility.  The business needs the most careful consideration.  Ministers themselves are uncertain as to what are the essential principles of their own scheme.  Every detail involves a principle, and in a Bill where clearness is of vital importance, every clause involves an ambiguity.  Each part moreover of the new constitution must be