difficulties involved in the removal of the Irish members. In the heat
of debate speeches were, I doubt not, delivered in which the argument
that you could not, as the Bill stood, remove the Irish members from
Westminster and keep the British Parliament supreme in Ireland, was
driven so far as to sound like an argument in favour of, at all costs,
allowing members from Ireland to sit in the English Parliament. Those
who appeared to fall into this error were, it must be noted, but a
fraction of the Unionist Party, and their mistake was little more than
verbal. When the Ministry maintained that the removal of the Irish
members from Westminster was a main feature of their Home Rule policy,
opponents naturally insisted upon the defects of the scheme laid before
them, and did not insist on the equal or greater defects of a plan which
the Government did not advocate. Mr. Gladstone, we are now told, has
changed his position, and assents to the principle that Ireland must be
represented in the British Parliament. If this assent be represented as
a concession to the demands of Unionists, my reply is that it is no such
thing. It is merely the acceptance of a different horn of an
argumentative dilemma. Grant for the sake of argument (what is by no
means certain) that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is really
saved. The advantage offered to England in exchange for Home Rule is
assuredly gone. My friend, Mr. John Morley, used to argue in favour of
Home Rule from the necessity of freeing the English Parliament from
Parnellite obstruction. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know
what he thinks of a concession which strikes his strongest argumentative
weapon out of his hands. My curiosity will be satisfied on the same day
which tells us Lord Spencer's reflections on the surrender of the policy
represented by the Land Purchase Bill. Meanwhile, I know well enough the
thoughts of every Unionist who is not tied by the exigencies of his
political antecedents or utterances. To say that in the eyes of such a
man the proposed concession is worthless, is to say far too little. It
is not a concession which he rates at a low price; it is a proposal
which he heart and soul condemns.'[54]

These words were not written to meet the present condition of the
controversy; they were published in 1887 at a time when no Gladstonian,
except Mr. Gladstone (if indeed he were an exception), knew whether the
retention in the Parliament at Westmin