consent of the lords spiritual and temporal. Home rule for Ireland will be the first-fruits of the great constitutional change which has destroyed the power of the House of Lords to annul Liberal legislation and has left it only the power to delay.

Not much change is likely to be made in the bill as it was passed by the House of Commons on January 16, 1913. Under the Parliament Act the bill must be passed by the Commons for the second and the third time in practically its original shape. The only amendments permissible in the House of Commons are such as are certified by the speaker to be necessary, owing to the time which has elapsed since the date of the former bill. The Parliament Act permits amendments which have been made in the House of Lords to be accepted by the Commons; and, if the upper house were really anxious for the best possible legislation, much might be done in coöperation with the government to improve the measure during the period of delay which the Lords are still permitted to interpose. It is not expected, however, that the Lords will make use of their limited powers. to this end. The vote of January 30 showed them to be on the whole utterly irreconcilable, and while amendments might be suggested for the Liberal government by Lord Morley or Lord Haldane, there is little probability of their being accepted by the House of Lords and incorporated in the bill with the consent of the House of Commons. In the House of Commons it is useless to spend time in debating a bill whose passage is assured, but whose amendment is impossible; hence the bill as it passed its third reading in the House of Commons on January 16, 1913, may be accepted as the measure which will restore to Ireland its Parliament and confer on the Irish nation the keenly desired boon of self-government.

It is not possible within the limits of this article to review the history of Ireland since the Union. It may be well, however, to recapitulate the principal events leading up to Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill, which was introduced in the House of Commons on April 8, 1886. From 1800 to 1829 there was no articulate expression in Parliament from the Irish nation, for no Roman Catholic Irishmen were in the enjoyment of the franchise. Catholic emancipation, which was forced from the British gov

ernment in 1829, was followed by the agitation for "repeal led by O'Connell. This movement collapsed in 1843, and then followed the bitter years of famine and emigration which reduced the population by almost one-half. From 1848 to 1871, the predominant features of Irish history were discontent and disaffection. Fenianism, which had its rise in the sixties, kept England in panic and nearly embroiled her in war with the United States. In 1869 the disestablishment of the Irish church was thrown as a sop to quiet the discontent; and in 1870 a Land Act, amended into ineffectiveness by the House of Lords, marked the first step in the legislation which culminated in Wyndham's Land Purchase Act of 1903.

On more constitutional lines than those followed by the Fenians, the first home-rule movement in Parliament began in 1871. At first this was largely an Ulster movement, and it was made possible by the granting of the franchise to workingmen living in the Parliamentary boroughs. The first Parliamentary leader of the movement was Isaac Butt. He was succeeded in 1880 by Charles Stuart Parnell, who had already proved his power by the introduction of obstructive tactics in the House of Commons, had won the confidence of the Fenian leaders and had identified himself with the Land League movement. The reply of the British government to the lawless tactics of the Land League was Gladstone's Land Act of 1881-the act which may be regarded as the real beginning of the long series of remedial measures passed to still the agrarian agitation which had kept Ireland in a constant turmoil. It was not until after the Reform Act of 1884 had enfranchised the working classes living outside the limits of the Parliamentary boroughs that the home rule question became a pressing one for the British Parliament. From 1885 to the present time Ireland has steadily elected four-fifths of her 103 members as Home Rulers, and these 81 to 85 members, repeatedly holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, have been able to decide the fate of governments. Since the Reform Act of

In 1801, when the population of England was estimated at 14,000,000, Ireland had 8,000,000 inhabitants. In 1911 the population of England and Wales had increased to 36,000,000; that of Ireland had fallen to 4,382,000.

1884 there have been eight general elections. In 1886, 1895 and 1900 the Conservatives obtained majorities over Liberals and Nationalists combined. In 1885, 1892, 1906, January, 1910, and December, 1910, the Liberals had the support of the majority elected to the House of Commons; but in one only of these elections-that of 1906-were the Liberals returned in such numbers as to make them independent of the support of Irish Nationalists.

In 1885, at the first general election at which the workingmen of Great Britain and Ireland were able to express their opinions throughout the constituencies, there were returned to Parliament 250 Conservatives, 335 Liberals and 85 Irish Nationalists. In the Parliament of 1880-1885, during the greater part of which the Liberals had been in office, the Irish had been inclined to act with the Conservatives. The Gladstone Cabinet had been defeated in June, 1885, nominally on the question of the duties on beer and spirits in the budget, but really because of the death of General Gordon at Khartoum and the conduct of affairs in the Soudan. Lord Salisbury was prime minister when the appeal was made to the new electorate in November, 1885, and in his famous speech at Newport, on October 7, 1885, he had made a definite bid for the Irish vote. The Liberal policy in Ireland had been a combination of repression and removal of grievSide by side with the Land Act, which was intended to secure to the tenant the value of his improvements and to fix the rents on a fair valuation of the landlord's property, the Liberals had passed a Coercion Act. This measure had been obstructed in the House of Commons by the Irish under the leadership of Parnell; and resentment against this drastic law, which is described by Lord Morley in his life of Gladstone as an act which "practically enabled the viceroy to lock up anybody he pleased and detain him as long as he pleased," was stronger than gratitude for the land legislation.

ances.

During the short-lived administration of Lord Salisbury, in 1885-86, an attempt was made to bind to the Conservative party in power the Irish Home Rulers who had acted with it in opposition. Lord Carnarvon, the new viceroy, definitely abjured coercion as a means of government and, as soon as he

arrived in Ireland, entered into negotiations with Parnell. In the Newport speech, Lord Salisbury made a declaration of the policy of his party, which was taken by many to foreshadow some measure of home rule for Ireland. He stated that there were two reasons for not renewing the Coercion Act:

We could not, and it would have done no good if we could. . . . To follow the extension of the franchise by coercion would have been a gross inconsistency. To show confidence by one act and the absence of confidence by a simultaneous act would be to stultify Parliament. Your inconsistency would have provoked such intense exasperation that it would have led to ten times more evil, ten times more resistance to the law than your crimes act could possibly have availed to check.

In this Newport speech there was a forecast at least of wide powers of local government for Ireland. In treating the question of extending English institutions to Ireland, Lord Salisbury touched upon the necessity of protection for the minority. His remedy was not the division of Ireland into small independent local governing areas. On this point he said:

Local authorities are more exposed to the temptation of enabling the majority to be unjust to the minority when they obtain jurisdiction over a small area than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wider area. In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly and mistakes of one.

In view of this pronouncement and of the policy of conciliation inaugurated in Ireland, there was some expectation that the Conservatives would continue to hold office by the help of the Irish Nationalists. There was, as we have seen, no majority for either party-Liberals, 335; Conservatives and Nationalists, 335 -but, in a letter to Balfour of December 20, 1885, Gladstone offered his support if the Conservatives should undertake to devise a plan of government for Ireland. Lord Salisbury was too prudent to risk his political career by any such adventure, and the settlement of the Irish question was turned over to the Liberals. The defeat of the Conservative government did not come, however, on the Irish question, but on an amendment to

the address in reply to the speech from the throne affecting the English rural laborer. The vote on this amendment was taken on January 27, 1886, and the division showed 252 for the government and 331 for the opposition-composed of 257 Liberals and 74 Irish Nationalists. By this time the Nationalist leaders had learned from Gladstone that he was willing to commit himself and his party to the introduction of a home-rule bill.

Two methods of meeting the Irish demand had been considered by Gladstone, repeal of the Act of Union and statutory home rule. There seems to have been a slight hesitation at first in his mind as to which of these plans it would be best to pursue; but in December, 1885, when there was still the possibility that home rule would be adopted as a Tory policy, Gladstone wrote to Lord Hartington that "a statutory basis seems to me better and safer than a revival of Grattan's Parliament." A statutory measure of home rule would leave the British Parliament still supreme and able to legislate for Ireland over the head of any Irish Parliament it might create. Repeal would have revived a condition of things under which the acts of the Irish Parliament could be disallowed by the crown on the advice of the ministers, but under which any alteration in the government of Ireland would have to be accomplished by the act of the Irish Parliament-the condition which had made union in 1800 possible only with the aid of unlimited bribery and corruption. From the time that Gladstone decided upon a home rule bill, no other method of granting self-government to Ireland has been under discussion; the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament has been an essential part of each successive proposal. In the bill of 1913 this principle is expressly set out in the first clause, which reads: "Notwithstanding the establishment of the Irish Parliament or anything contained in this Act, the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters and things within His Majesty's Dominions." No such explicit statement appeared in the Home Rule Bill of 1886, but this bill never reached committee stage. In 1893 imperial supremacy was affirmed both in the preamble and in the body of the bill. Even without any specific reservation of