What, then, the new constitution secures is not the power, but the legal right to abolish the new constitution.  It is a right to carry through a fundamental change by lawful means.  The Bill legalises revolution.  This is well, for it is desirable that in a civilised State every change of institutions should be effected by constitutional methods.  But should the circumstances ever arise under which Great Britain is resolved, in spite of the wishes of the Irish people or a large portion thereof, to abolish Home Rule and exercise the right of reserved sovereignty, there is no reason to expect that Irishmen who oppose British policy will admit that her use of sovereign power is morally justifiable.  By force, or the threat of force, the controversy will, we must expect, in the last instance, be decided.  However this may be, we must now realise what the supremacy of Parliament, at any rate to the Irish leaders who accept it, really means.  It means nothing but the right of the Imperial Parliament of its own authority to repeal the Home Rule Bill and destroy the new constitution.  The right may be worth having.  But it is not the right to govern Ireland or to control the Irish Government; it is not a means of government at all:  it is a method of constitutional revolution, or reaction.

Some critic will object that this supremacy of Parliament means to him a good deal more than the mere right to abolish the constitution.  So be it.  Let the objector then tell us in precise language what it does mean.  If his reply is that the term is ambiguous, that its meaning must be construed in accordance with events, and may, according to circumstances, be restricted or extended, then he suggests that Parliamentary supremacy is not only an empty right, but an urgent peril.  Nothing can be more dangerous than a compact between England and Ireland which the contracting parties construe from the very beginning in different senses.  If by asserting the supreme authority of Parliament English statesmen mean that Parliament reserves the right to supervise and control the government of Ireland, whilst Irishmen understand that Parliament retains nothing more than such a kind of supremacy or sovereignty as it asserts, rather than exercises, in New Zealand, then we are entering into a doubtful contract which lays the sure basis of a quarrel.  We are deliberately preparing the ground for disappointment, for imputations of bad faith, for recriminations, for bitter animosity, it may be for civil war.  If there be, as is certainly the case, a fair doubt as to what is meant by the supremacy of Parliament, let the doubt be cleared up.  This is required by the dictates both of expediency and of honour.  Meanwhile we may assume that the supremacy of Parliament, or the ‘supreme authority of Parliament,’ means in substance the kind of sovereignty which Parliament exercises, or claims to exercise, in every part of the British Empire.

For the maintenance of such supremacy, be it valuable or be it worthless, Great Britain pays a heavy price.  For the sake of ’an outward and visible sign of Imperial supremacy’ we retain eighty Irish members in the Imperial Parliament.[35]