sibly cause
him more pain than some other medicine which he has no intention of
taking, is curiously oblique logic. The question is not oblique; it is
direct. Will the operation do more harm to his constitution than the
slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate? Are the conditions of
the connection between England and Ireland, as laid down in the Act of
Union, incapable of improvement? Is the present working of these
conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for Irish order and
for English institutions, than any practicable proposal that it is
within the compass of statesmanship to devise, and of civic sense to
accept and to work? That is the question.

Some people contend that the burden of making out a case rests on the
advocate of change, and not on those who support things as they are. But
who supports things as they are? Things as they are have become
insupportable. If you make any of the constitutional changes that have
been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as Englishmen now
know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem
it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the
procedure of the House of Commons." As if that were the alternative.
Great changes in the rules may do other good things, but no single
competent authority believes that in this particular they will do the
thing that we want. We cannot avoid constitutional changes. It is made
matter of crushing rebuke that the Irish proposals of the late
Government were an innovation on the old constitution of the realm. But
everybody knows that, while ancient forms have survived, the last
hundred years have witnessed a long succession of silent but most
profound innovations. It was shortsighted to assume that the
redistribution of political power that took place in 1884-5 was the last
chapter of the history of constitutional change. It ought to have been
foreseen that new possessors of power, both Irish and British, would
press for objects the pursuit of which would certainly involve further
novelties in the methods and machinery of government. Every given
innovation must be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in
the fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. When one of the
plans for the better government of Ireland is described as depriving
parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and strength, as
weakening the Executive at home, and lessening the power of the co