measure Ministerialists show a singular reticence.  It may be that they wish to save time and hold that the measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own inherent merits.  But to a critic of the new constitution another explanation suggests itself.  Can it be possible that Ministerialists themselves are not certain what are the fixed principles of the new policy?  Everything about it is indefinite, vague, uncertain.  Who can say with assurance what Gladstonians understand by Imperial supremacy?  Is there or is there not any idea of excluding Ulster from the operation of the Bill?  Is it or is it not a principle that members from Ireland shall be summoned to Westminster?  Are the Irish members, if summoned, to vote on all matters, or on some only?  To each of these questions the only answer that can be given is—­nobody knows.  But in this state of ignorance it is natural and excusable that apologists should confine themselves to general lines of defence.  No politician who respects himself would willingly risk a vigorous apology for the special provisions of a particular measure, when, for aught he knows, the provision which he thinks essential turns out to be an unimportant detail, and is liable to sudden variation.

FOOTNOTES: 

[108] ’I have told you candidly my sentiments.  I think they are not likely to alter yours....  But hereafter they may be of some use to you, in some future form which your commonwealth may take.  In the present it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, “through great varieties of untried being,” and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.’—­Burke’s Works, ii. (ed. 1872), p. 517, ’Reflections on the Revolution in France.’

[109] As to the general causes of the strength of the Home Rule movement in England, and the general considerations in its favour, see England’s Case against Home Rule (3rd ed.), ch. iii. and iv. pp. 34-127.  From the opinions expressed in these chapters I see no reason for receding.

[110] Mr. M’Carthy, April 10, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debate, 353.

[111] [May 6, 1882.  Now twenty-nine years back.]

[112] Every one should read Mr. Lecky’s letter of April 4, 1893, addressed to the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, and printed in the Chamber’s Reply to Mr. Gladstone’s speech.  It deals immediately not with the relations between England and Ireland, but with the alleged prosperity of Ireland under Grattan’s Constitution.  But in principle it applies to the point here discussed, and I venture to say that every page of Mr. Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth Century which refers to Grattan’s Parliament bears out the contention, that no inference can be drawn from it as to the successful working, as regards either England or Ireland, of the legislature to be constituted under the Home Rule Bill.