authority of the Privy Council.  Why should Irishmen be more reasonable than other men?  In Ireland we are trying an entirely novel and dangerous experiment; we are fostering the spirit of nationality under the forms of federation.  The Privy Council, hide the matter as you will, represents British power.  If Ireland is a nation, the Government of Great Britain is an alien Government; the judgments of the Privy Council are the judgments of an alien Court, and reason forbids us to expect more submission to the decisions of an alien tribunal than to the laws of an alien legislature.

Suppose, however, that British judgments are enforced by the British army.  Is this a result in which any Englishman or Irishman could rejoice?  Can we say that the new constitution works well when its real and visible sanction is the use of British soldiers?  The plain truth is that arrangements for legally restraining the Irish Parliament within the due limits of its powers must be ineffective and unreal and, if the principle of Home Rule be once admitted, the widest must be the wisest form of it.  Colonial independence is better for Ireland and safer for England than sham federalism.[83]

Grant, however, that the judgments of the Privy Council can be enforced more easily than I suppose, still even Gladstonians would admit that the proper working of the new constitution depends on two presumptions.  The one is that the Irish people are under no strong temptation to oppose the Restrictions or to throw off the obligations imposed upon the Irish Parliament or Government.  The other that they possess no ready means for nullifying these Restrictions or obligations.

Each of these assumptions is false.

Restraints ineffective for the protection either of British interests or of individual freedom may be intensely irritating to national sentiment.

The limitations imposed on the powers of the Irish Parliament, or, in other words, of the Irish people, are opposed to the spirit of nationality and independence which Home Rule, it is hoped, will appease or satisfy.  They will be hateful therefore not only to that multitude whom Gladstonians call the Irish people, but to every Irishman who is bidden by Gladstonians to consider himself a member of the Irish nation.

The Irish are a martial race; they excel in the practice, and delight in the pageantry, of warfare, but they are forbidden to raise a regiment or man a gunboat.  They cannot legally raise a regiment of volunteers, they cannot save their country from invasion.  Will they permanently acquiesce in restraints not imposed on the Channel Islands?  Irishmen, Unionists no less than Home Rulers, are mostly Protectionists, and believe that tariffs may give to Ireland, not indeed a ‘plethora of wealth,’ for of this no man out of Bedlam except Mr. Gladstone dreams, but reasonable prosperity.  Vain to argue that Protection is folly.  Englishmen think so, and Englishmen are right.  But English doctrine is