h the forecast, or the foresight, of the present[40] Chief
Secretary for Ireland.

'Let us suppose that these Irish representatives for Imperial purposes
are not chosen by the legislative body, but are chosen directly by Irish
constituencies. You have already, according to our plan, two sets of
constituencies. You have the 103 constituencies that return the popular
branch of the legislative body, and you have those other constituencies
up to seventy-five which return the elective members of the other branch
of the legislative body. You have, therefore, got already on our plan
two sets of constituencies. Now, if you are going to send members to
Westminster for Imperial purposes to the number of forty-five or to the
number of ninety-five, you must mark out a third set of
constituencies--you must have a third set of elections. A system of that
kind does not strike me at least as being exactly the thing for a
country of which we are assured that before everything else its prime
want is a profound respite from political turmoil. There are plenty of
other objections from the Irish point of view, which I am not now going
to dwell upon. Depend upon it that an Irish Legislature will not be up
to the magnitude of the enormous business that is going to be cast upon
it unless you leave all the brains that Irish public men have got to do
Irish work in Ireland. Depend upon this, too, that if you have one set
of Irish members in London it is a moral certainty that disturbing
rivalries, disturbing intrigues would spring up, and that the natural
and wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in the Irish
Assembly would be complicated and confused and thrown out of gear by the
separate representatives of the country. All this is bad enough.'[41]

These are the words of my friend Mr. Morley.[42] They were spoken at
Newcastle on April 21, 1886. He was then, as now, responsible for the
government of Ireland. Nothing can add to their gravity; nothing can add
to their force; they were true in 1886, they remain as true to-day as
they were seven years ago.[43]

As to England.--The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is on
the face of it a gross and patent injustice to Great Britain. It is
absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish
Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or
Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though
vitally interested in the cha