Parliament.

_Fourthly_. The Restrictions (popularly known as the safeguards)
and the obligations imposed upon the Irish Government.

These features are primary and essential; everything else, however
important in itself, is subsidiary and accidental.

A. _The Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament_[26]

The Home Rule Bill asserts in its preamble the inexpediency of
'impairing or restricting the supreme authority of Parliament'; and in
clause 33, apparently[27] assumes the right of the Imperial Parliament
after the passing of the Home Rule Bill to enact for Ireland laws which
cannot be repealed by the Irish Parliament.

The new constitution therefore maintains the supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament.

What, however, is the true meaning of this 'supreme authority,'
'supremacy,' or 'sovereignty,' if you like, of the Imperial Parliament?

The term, as already pointed out,[28] is distinctly ambiguous, and
unless this ambiguity is cleared up, the effect of the Home Rule Bill,
and the nature of our new constitution, will never be understood.

The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament may mean the right and power of
Parliament to govern Ireland in the same sense in which it now governs
England, that is, to exercise effective control over the whole
administration of affairs in Ireland, and for this purpose, through the
action of the English Government, or, when necessary, by legislation, to
direct, supervise and control the acts of every authority in Ireland,
including the Irish Executive and the Irish Legislature. If this were
the meaning of the expression, the Imperial Parliament would, after the
passing of the Home Rule Bill, as before, be as truly supreme in Ireland
as in England, in Scotland, in the Isle of Man, or in Jersey. The Irish
Executive and the Irish Parliament would, of course, be bodies
possessing large--and it might be very dangerous--delegated powers, but
they would stand in the same relation to the Imperial Parliament as does
the London County Council, which also possesses large delegated powers,
which administers the affairs of a population as large as that of
Scotland and which, very possibly, may receive from Parliament as time
goes on larger and more extended authority than the Council now
possesses. This is the sense which many Gladstonians, and some
Unionists, attribute to the term 'supremacy of Parliament.' It is not
the sense in which the expression 'supreme authority of Parliament'