A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 by Albert Venn Dicey
page 49 of 237 (20%)
page 49 of 237 (20%)
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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 |
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