the Irish
Government Act.

Such a Judge would have to consider a question to which English Courts
are now quite unaccustomed as regards Acts passed by the Parliament of
the United Kingdom. The reason why they are unused to solve the
particular kind of question supposed to arise under the new Irish
Constitution is, that as the Parliament of the United Kingdom is
undoubtedly a sovereign body, the validity of its enactments is in any
British Court beyond dispute. The reason why the problem might under the
Gladstonian Constitution require an answer is, that the question might
arise whether the British Parliament were or were not a sovereign body.

Our Judge would find the question more difficult to answer than is
readily admitted by English lawyers not versed in any constitution
except their own. He would have to consider the language and effect of
the Irish Government Act in the light of certain propositions which are
now, and at the supposed passing of that Act must have been, true of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom.

These propositions may be thus stated, roughly indeed, but with
sufficient accuracy for our purpose:--

The Parliament of the United Kingdom is admittedly the sovereign of the
whole British Empire.

The Parliament of the United Kingdom because it is a sovereign body can
make laws for every part of the British Empire, and can legally make or
unmake any law, and establish, alter, or abolish any institution
(including in that term the Constitution of the Canadian Dominion or of
Victoria) existing within the limits of any country subject to the
British Crown.

The Parliament of the United Kingdom just because it is a sovereign body
cannot, whilst retaining its position as sovereign of the British
Empire, be itself bound by any Act of Parliament whatever.

To recur to an instance which is pre-eminently instructive, Parliament
conferred in 1867 upon the Dominion of Canada as large a measure of
independence as is compatible with a colony's maintaining its position
as part of the British Empire. Yet the Parliament of the United Kingdom
retains now, as ever, the indisputable legal power to change or abolish
the Constitution of the Dominion.

The Parliament of the United Kingdom, just because it is a sovereign
body, though it cannot remain a sovereign and place a legal limit on its
own powers, can, like any other sovereign, e.g. the Czar of Russia,
abdicate its sovereignty in reference to the whole, or