destroy
the new constitution. The right may be worth having. But it is not the
right to govern Ireland or to control the Irish Government; it is not a
means of government at all: it is a method of constitutional revolution,
or reaction.

Some critic will object that this supremacy of Parliament means to him
a good deal more than the mere right to abolish the constitution. So be
it. Let the objector then tell us in precise language what it does mean.
If his reply is that the term is ambiguous, that its meaning must be
construed in accordance with events, and may, according to
circumstances, be restricted or extended, then he suggests that
Parliamentary supremacy is not only an empty right, but an urgent peril.
Nothing can be more dangerous than a compact between England and Ireland
which the contracting parties construe from the very beginning in
different senses. If by asserting the supreme authority of Parliament
English statesmen mean that Parliament reserves the right to supervise
and control the government of Ireland, whilst Irishmen understand that
Parliament retains nothing more than such a kind of supremacy or
sovereignty as it asserts, rather than exercises, in New Zealand, then
we are entering into a doubtful contract which lays the sure basis of a
quarrel. We are deliberately preparing the ground for disappointment,
for imputations of bad faith, for recriminations, for bitter animosity,
it may be for civil war. If there be, as is certainly the case, a fair
doubt as to what is meant by the supremacy of Parliament, let the doubt
be cleared up. This is required by the dictates both of expediency and
of honour. Meanwhile we may assume that the supremacy of Parliament, or
the 'supreme authority of Parliament,' means in substance the kind of
sovereignty which Parliament exercises, or claims to exercise, in every
part of the British Empire.

For the maintenance of such supremacy, be it valuable or be it
worthless, Great Britain pays a heavy price. For the sake of 'an
outward and visible sign of Imperial supremacy' we retain eighty Irish
members in the Imperial Parliament.[35]

B. _The Retention of the Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament_

This is now[36] an essential, or at least a most important part of the
ministerial policy for Ireland, yet it is a proposal which even its
advocates must find difficult of defence. In 1886 every Gladstonian
leader told us that it was desirable, politic, and just to exclu