.

I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home
the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve
anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot
be mitigated. Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment. Let me
remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish
representation at Westminster. Obviously it is the most fundamental
question of all in the matter of Home Rule. The whole structure of the
Bill hangs on it. It affects every provision, and particularly the
financial provisions. Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it
an "organic detail," and in popular controversy it is still generally
regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light. As a matter of
history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding
the fate of the Home Rule Bills. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to
exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental
opposition. In 1893, in proposing to retain them--first with limited
functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British
Members--he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not
merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical. On both occasions Mr.
Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition: in 1886 because he
was then a Federalist, advocating "Quebec" Home Rule for Ireland, and
regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as
contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be
a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of
Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither
Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two.

These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with
what they call "Federal" Home Rule. It was through a desperate desire to
conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and
produced a scheme which he himself could not defend. And it was one of
the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate--a statesman, moreover,
possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time--who
snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893.
We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events. We want Home
Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple
straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own
devising.

N