ly to powers which must
be exercised, or at any rate may need to be exercised, if not by the
subordinate legislature, then by the superior Parliament. Those
restrictions on the Irish Legislature which are imposed in order to
protect the religious or economic interests of a minority within the
State, or as a recognition that there are certain kinds of laws which it
is morally wrong to pass, fall into an altogether different category. By
implication they morally bind the superior Parliament too, and are
irrelevant, therefore, to the question of representation. They will be
necessary, no doubt, in the coming Irish Bill, though they need not be
so extensive as those which are to be found in Clause 4 of the Bill of
1893, some of which are borrowed from the famous anti-slavery amendments
of 1865-1869 to the Constitution of the United States.[92] In inserting
them we shall again be following the "Federal" rather than the
"Colonial" model. No such restrictions have been imposed by the Mother
Country upon any self-governing Colony. The nearest approach, perhaps,
to such a tendency was the provision in the Transvaal Constitution of
1906 (Section 39), that "any law whereby persons not of European birth
or descent may be subjected or made liable to any disabilities or
restrictions to which persons of European birth or descent are not also
subjected or made liable" should be specially "reserved"--that is, sent
home by the Governor--for the signification of the Royal pleasure; but
no similar provision appeared in the Act of 1909 for constituting the
South African Union. In Federal systems, on the other hand, such
restrictions, taking the form of self-denying ordinances, are common,
whether appearing in the Federal Constitution itself or in the
subordinate State Constitutions. The Constitution of the United States,
for example, in addition to the anti-slavery provisions noted above,
enacts that the National Government cannot (by Amendment I.) establish
any religion or prohibit its free exercise, or (by Amendment V.) take
private property for public use without just compensation, or (by
Article 1, Sec. 9) grant a title of nobility. Neither (by Amendment XIV.
and Article 1, Sec. 10 respectively) can a State do these things. By
Article 1, Sec. 10, a State cannot pass a law impairing the obligation of a
contract. Exactly similar restrictions appear in many of the individual
State Constitutions. Others forbid the establishment of any church