beg you to mark attentively the use to which the Irish members would
inevitably put their votes--inevitably and naturally. Those who make
most of the retention of the Irish members at Westminster are also those
who make most of there being what they call a real and effective and a
freely and constantly exercised veto at Westminster upon the doings at
Dublin. You see the position. A legislative body in Dublin passes a
Bill. The idea is that that Bill is to lie upon the table of the two
Houses of Parliament in London for forty days--forty days in the
wilderness. What does that mean? It means this, that every question that
had been fought out in Ireland would be fought out over again by the
Irish members in our Parliament. It means that the House of Lords here
would throw out pretty nearly every Bill that was passed at Dublin. What
would be the result of that? You would have the present block of our
business. You would have all the present irritation and exasperation.
English work would not be done; Irish feeling would not be conciliated,
but would be exasperated. The whole efforts of the Irish members would
be devoted to throwing their weight--I do not blame them for this--first
to one party and then to another until they had compelled the removal of
these provoking barriers, restrictions, and limitations which ought
never to have been set up. I cannot think, for my part I cannot see, how
an arrangement of that sort promises well either for the condition of
Ireland or for our Parliament. If anybody, in my opinion, were to move
an amendment to our Bill in the House of Commons in such a direction as
this, with all these consequences foreseen, I do not believe such an
amendment would find twenty supporters.'[44]

This was the opinion of Mr. John Morley in 1886. A word in it here or
there is inapplicable to the details of the present Bill; but in
principle every syllable cited by me from his Newcastle address forms
part of the Unionist argument against summoning as much as a single