If this assent be represented as a concession to the demands of Unionists, my reply is that it is no such thing.  It is merely the acceptance of a different horn of an argumentative dilemma.  Grant for the sake of argument (what is by no means certain) that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is really saved.  The advantage offered to England in exchange for Home Rule is assuredly gone.  My friend, Mr. John Morley, used to argue in favour of Home Rule from the necessity of freeing the English Parliament from Parnellite obstruction.  As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what he thinks of a concession which strikes his strongest argumentative weapon out of his hands.  My curiosity will be satisfied on the same day which tells us Lord Spencer’s reflections on the surrender of the policy represented by the Land Purchase Bill.  Meanwhile, I know well enough the thoughts of every Unionist who is not tied by the exigencies of his political antecedents or utterances.  To say that in the eyes of such a man the proposed concession is worthless, is to say far too little.  It is not a concession which he rates at a low price; it is a proposal which he heart and soul condemns.’[54]

These words were not written to meet the present condition of the controversy; they were published in 1887 at a time when no Gladstonian, except Mr. Gladstone (if indeed he were an exception), knew whether the retention in the Parliament at Westminster, or the exclusion from the Parliament at Westminster, of the Irish members, was an essential principle of Home Rule.

England again, it is alleged, suffers without murmuring all the inconvenience caused by the Irish vote at Westminster; and she may well, under a system of Home Rule, bear without complaint evils which she has tolerated for near a century.

The answer to this reasoning is plain.  It is a sorry plea indeed for a desperate innovation that it leaves the evils of the existing state of things no worse than they now are.  For the sake of the maintenance of the Union, which Unionists hold of inestimable value, England has borne the inconvenience caused to her by the Irish vote.  It argues simplicity, or impudence, to urge that England should continue to bear the inconvenience when the national unity is sacrificed for the sake of which it was endured.  But the reply does not stop here.  The presence of Irish members at Westminster under the new constitution increases and stereotypes the evils, whatever their extent, now resulting from the existence of 103 Irish members in the House of Commons.  The evils are increased because the Irish members are turned into a delegation from the Irish State, and their action ceases to be influenced, as it now is, by the consideration—­a very important one—­that the Imperial Parliament not only in theory but in fact legislates for Ireland, and that the English Cabinet controls the Irish administration and directs the course of political promotion in Ireland.