Lastly, even if the question of inclusion in the House of Commons were “capable of solution,” as it is not, there would remain the problem raised by the House of Lords.  It is idle to ignore the fact that the bulk of the Irish peerage, and the Assembly of which it forms part, has been for a century in consistent and resolute opposition to the views of the vast majority of Irishmen.  The recent curtailment of its powers, whether a right or a wrong measure in itself, does not make it any the more suitable as an Upper Chamber, under a Home Rule scheme, for the decision of important Irish questions reserved for settlement at Westminster; indeed, the bare proposal is the best imaginable example of the extraordinary complications which would ensue from the introduction of a quasi-Federal element into a unitary Constitution.

Federal Upper Chambers, so far from being hostile to State rights, are almost invariably framed on the principle of giving disproportionately large representation to the smaller States.  In the United States and Australia, for example, every State, however small, has an equal number of Senators.

It will be clear now that there are two distinct ways of approaching the question of the framework of Home Rule.  One may begin with the nature and extent of the powers reserved or delegated, and proceed from them to the inclusion and exclusion of Irish representation at Westminster, or one may begin with the topic of inclusion or exclusion and proceed from it to the nature and extent of powers.  While premising that we must trust Ireland and evoke her sense of responsibility, I chose the latter of the two courses, because I believe it to be on the whole the most illuminating and trustworthy course.  It is also the more logical course, though I should not have adopted it for that reason alone; and I have already given, I hope, some good reasons to show that in this matter logic and policy coincide.  Englishmen pride themselves on the lack of logic which characterizes their slowly evolved institutions, but they may easily carry that pride to preposterous extremes.  Faced now with the necessity of making a written Constitution which will stand the test of daily use they would commit the last of innumerable errors in Irish policy if, with full warning from experience elsewhere, they were to frame a measure whose unprecedented and unworkable provisions were the outcome of a distrust of Ireland which it was the ostensible object of the measure itself to remove.

IV.

IRISH POWERS AND THEIR BEARING ON EXCLUSION.

I pass to what I suggest to be the right solution:  Total exclusion, as proposed by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, though he shrank from recommending what he knew to be its financial corollary.  Mr. Bright regarded exclusion as the “best clause” of a dangerous scheme, and Mr. Chamberlain has admitted that he attacked it, as he attacked the proposals for Land Purchase, which he knew to be right, in order to “kill the Bill."[79] I propose only to recapitulate the merits of exclusion before dealing with the alleged difficulties of that form of Home Rule, and in particular with the point on which the controversy mainly turns—­Finance.