Fourthly. The Restrictions on the powers of the Irish Parliament do not contain any safeguard against legislation which sets aside contracts.

This is remarkable, not to say ominous.  The Gladstonian constitution has been drawn up by legislators who profess to profit by the experience of America.  Under the Constitution of the United States[71] no State can pass any law ‘impairing the obligation of a contract.’  This provision has kept alive throughout the Union the belief in the sacredness of legal promises.  It embodies a principle which lies at the bottom of all progressive legislation.  It gives the best guarantee which a constitution can give against the most insidious form of legislative unfairness; it embodies a doctrine which all legislatures are likely to neglect and which an Irish Parliament is more likely to neglect than any other legislature, for in Ireland there exist contracts which do not command popular approval, and the Imperial legislation of twenty years and more has taught the Irish people that agreements which do not command popular approval may, without breach of good faith, be set aside by legislative enactment.  We all know further that reforms, or innovations, are desired by thousands of Irishmen which cannot be carried into effect unless the obligation of contracts be impaired.  Why, then, have statesmen who borrow freely from the Constitution of the United States omitted the most salutary of its provisions from our new constitution?

The official reply is at any rate singular; it is apparently[72] that the section of the United States Constitution which invalidates any law impairing the obligation of a contract has given much occupation to the Courts of America.  This answer is on the face of it futile; it urges the proved utility of a law as a reason for its not being enacted; as well suggest that because the criminal courts are mainly occupied with the trial of thieves there ought to be no law against petty larceny, or that because the labours of the Divorce Court increase year by year, the law ought not to permit divorce.  The absurdity of the official reply suggests the existence of some reason which the defenders of this strange omission are unwilling clearly to allege.  The true reason why the founders of the new constitution have omitted in this instance to copy a polity which they profess to admire is not hard to discover.  An enactment which enjoined an Irish Parliament to respect the sanctity of a contract would be fatal to any remodelling of the Irish land law which tended towards the spoliation of landowners.  Yet this very fact makes the matter all the more serious.  That British statesmen should under these circumstances deliberately decline to insert an injunction to respect the sanctity of plighted good faith is much more than an omission.  It amounts to the suggestion, almost to the approval, of legislative robbery; it is a proclamation that as against landlords, as against creditors, as against