Irish Parliament and its leaders.  But for all this, their own language and the Bill itself prove that the supreme authority of Parliament is under the new constitution to be taken in its limited, and what for the sake of distinction we may call its ‘colonial’ sense.  This is proved, if evidence were wanting, by the provision[33] that after fifteen years from the time when the Bill passes into law the financial relations between England and Ireland may be revised in pursuance of an Address to the Crown from the House of Commons or from the Irish legislative assembly.  If the Imperial Parliament retains an effective or practically unlimited supremacy, the provision is futile and needless.  What necessity is there for enacting that a sovereign Parliament, which institutes, may alter a scheme of taxation?  But the provision is intelligible enough on one supposition, and on one supposition only.  It is both intelligible and in place if Parliament gives up the real right of governing Ireland and occupies towards what is now a part of the United Kingdom the position, or something very like the position, which Parliament occupies towards a self-governing colony.  It then embodies a compact between England and Ireland, and institutes a regular method for revising their financial relations.  But this very compact proves that as regards Ireland the Imperial Parliament, if it reserves to itself ultimate sovereignty, has for practical purposes surrendered the reality of control.

There is no need to assert that this supremacy of the Imperial Parliament means nothing.  The assertion would not be true.  The reservation of sovereign authority means something, but it does not mean much.  It does not mean the power or the right to govern Ireland; it means at most the legal and moral right to modify, or put an end to, the new constitution if ever it works badly.

The power, indeed, to abolish the constitution can neither be given nor taken away by Acts of Parliament, by the declarations of English statesmen, or the concessions of Irish leaders, whether authorised or not to pledge the Irish people.  It is given to Great Britain, not by enactments, but by nature; it arises from the inherent capacity of a strong, a flourishing, a populous, and a wealthy country to control or coerce a neighbouring island which is poor, divided, and weak.[34] This natural supremacy will, if the interests of Great Britain require it, be enforced by armies, by ironclads, by blockades, by hostile tariffs, by all the means through which national predominance can make itself felt.  All reference to superior power is, in controversies between citizens, hateful to every man endowed with a sense of humanity or of justice.  But in serious discussions facts must be faced, and if, for the sake of argument, I contrast, much against my will, the power of Great Britain with the weakness of Ireland, let it be remembered that the conception of a rivalry or conflict is forced upon Unionists by the mere proposal of Home Rule.  As long as we remain a United Kingdom, there is no more need to think even of hypothetical or argumentative opposition between the resources or interest of England and of Ireland than there is to consider what in case of a contest may be the relative force of London and of the Orkneys.