ts British power. If Ireland is a nation,
the Government of Great Britain is an alien Government; the judgments of
the Privy Council are the judgments of an alien Court, and reason
forbids us to expect more submission to the decisions of an alien
tribunal than to the laws of an alien legislature.

Suppose, however, that British judgments are enforced by the British
army. Is this a result in which any Englishman or Irishman could
rejoice? Can we say that the new constitution works well when its real
and visible sanction is the use of British soldiers? The plain truth is
that arrangements for legally restraining the Irish Parliament within
the due limits of its powers must be ineffective and unreal and, if the
principle of Home Rule be once admitted, the widest must be the wisest
form of it. Colonial independence is better for Ireland and safer for
England than sham federalism.[83]

Grant, however, that the judgments of the Privy Council can be enforced
more easily than I suppose, still even Gladstonians would admit that the
proper working of the new constitution depends on two presumptions. The
one is that the Irish people are under no strong temptation to oppose
the Restrictions or to throw off the obligations imposed upon the Irish
Parliament or Government. The other that they possess no ready means for
nullifying these Restrictions or obligations.

Each of these assumptions is false.

Restraints ineffective for the protection either of British interests or
of individual freedom may be intensely irritating to national sentiment.

The limitations imposed on the powers of the Irish Parliament, or, in
other words, of the Irish people, are opposed to the spirit of
nationality and independence which Home Rule, it is hoped, will appease
or satisfy. They will be hateful therefore not only to that multitude
whom Gladstonians call the Irish people, but to every Irishman who is
bidden by Gladstonians to consider himself a member of the Irish nation.

The Irish are a martial race; they excel in the practice, and delight in
the pageantry, of warfare, but they are forbidden to raise a regiment or
man a gunboat. They cannot legally raise a regiment of volunteers, they
cannot save their country from invasion. Will they permanently acquiesce
in restraints not imposed on the Channel Islands? Irishmen, Unionists no
less than Home Rulers, are mostly Protectionists, and believe that
tariffs may give to Ireland, not indeed a 'plethora