absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish
Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or
Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though
vitally interested in the character of the Irish Executive, is not to
say a word in the matter, eighty Irishmen are to help in determining,
and are often actually to determine, whether Lord Salisbury or Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain, is to be Prime Minister and
direct the policy of England. Here again 1 can rely on the invaluable
aid of Mr. Morley. He has denounced the effect on England of retaining
Irish members at Westminster with a strength of language and a weight of
authority to which it is impossible for me to make any pretension.

'But there is a word to be said about the effect on our own Parliament,
and I think the effect of such an arrangement--and I cannot help
thinking so till I hear of better arrangements--upon our own Parliament
would be worse still. It is very easy to talk about reducing the number
of the Irish members; perhaps it would not be so easy to do. It is very
easy to talk about letting them take part in some questions and not in
others, but it will be very difficult when you come to draw the line in
theory between the questions in which they shall take a part and those
in which they shall not take a part. But I do not care what precautions
you take; I do not care where you draw the line in theory; but you may
depend upon it--I predict--that there is no power on the earth that can
prevent the Irish members in such circumstances from being in the future
Parliament what they were in the past, and what to some extent they are
in the present, the arbiters and the masters of English policy, of
English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British
Administrations. You will have weakened by the withdrawal of able men
the Legislature of Dublin, and you will have demoralized the Legislature
at Westminster. We know very well what that demoralisation means, for I