ago would not diminish the dangers with which, under a system of Home
Rule, the presence of the Irish members at Westminster actually
threatens England. But the plea, futile as it is, is not supported by
fact. It rests on a misrepresentation of the Unionist position in 1886.

'The case in truth stands thus:--Mr. Gladstone was [in 1886] placed in
effect in this dilemma: "If you do not," said his opponents, "retain the
Irish representatives at Westminster, the sovereignty of the British
Parliament will be, under the terms of your Bill, no more than a name;
if you do retain them, Great Britain will lose the only material
advantage offered her in exchange for the local independence of
Ireland." Gladstonians, in substance, replied that the devices embodied
in the Government of Ireland Bill at once freed the British Parliament
from the presence of the Parnellites and safeguarded the sovereignty of
the British, or (for in this matter there was some confusion) of the
Imperial Parliament. On the latter point issue was joined. The other
horn of the dilemma fell out of sight, and some Unionists, rightly
believing that the Bill as it stood did not preserve the supremacy of
the British Parliament, pressed the Ministry hard with all the
difficulties involved in the removal of the Irish members. In the heat
of debate speeches were, I doubt not, delivered in which the argument
that you could not, as the Bill stood, remove the Irish members from
Westminster and keep the British Parliament supreme in Ireland, was
driven so far as to sound like an argument in favour of, at all costs,
allowing members from Ireland to sit in the English Parliament. Those
who appeared to fall into this error were, it must be noted, but a
fraction of the Unionist Party, and their mistake was little more than
verbal. When the Ministry maintained that the removal of the Irish
members from Westminster was a main feature of their Home Rule policy,
opponents naturally insisted upon the defects of the scheme laid before