On February 21, 1848, Girardin said that the monarchy of July would not last three days longer.  February 24 verified the insight and foresight of the statesman, and proved that the journalist was an acute observer.  The difference is worth consideration.  Tocqueville’s prophecy would in all probability have been substantially realised had Louis Philippe shown as much energy in 1848 as in 1832, and had the Orleanist dynasty reigned till after his death.  Girardin’s guess would not have been even a happy hit if one of a thousand accidents had averted the catastrophe of February 24.  The worth of the arguments against or for the new constitution depends upon the extent to which they are based upon a mastery of general principles and upon a sound analysis of the conditions of the time, and in these conditions are included the character of the English and of the Irish people.  But to object to criticisms simply as prophecies is to reject foresight and to forbid politicians who are creating a constitution for the future to consider what will be its future working.

Another Gladstonian argument is that because the English constitution itself is full of paradoxes, peculiarities, and anomalies, therefore the contradictions or anomalies which are patent in the new constitution (such for example as the retention of the Irish members at Westminster) are of no importance.

The fact asserted is past dispute.  Our institutions are based upon fictions.  The Prime Minister, the real head of the English Executive, is an official unknown to the law.  The Queen, who is the only constitutional head of the Executive, is not the real head of the Government.  The Crown possesses a veto on all legislation and never exercises it; the House of Lords might, if the House pleased, reject year by year every Bill sent up to it by the House of Commons; yet such a course of action is never actually pursued and could not be dreamt of except by a madman.  There is no advantage in exemplifying further a condition of things which must be known to every person who has the slightest acquaintance with either the law, or the custom, of the constitution.  But the inference which Gladstonian apologists draw from the existence of anomalies is, in the strict sense of the word, preposterous.  On the face of the matter it is a strange way of reasoning to say that because the constitution is filled with odd arrangements which no man can justify in theory, you therefore, when designing a new constitution, should take no care to make your arrangements consistent and harmonious.  But the Gladstonian error goes a good deal deeper than is at first sight apparent.  The anomalies or the fictions of the constitution are in reality adaptations, often awkward enough in themselves, of some old institution, and are preserved because, though they look strange, they are found to work well.  Thus the King of England was at one time the actual sovereign of the State, or at any rate the most important member of